Deadly Enterprise Page 5

  “The system,” he replied. “You want to party; you want the ice, blow and good booze, nice clothes, good life, comfortable place to sleep at night. You want the police to leave you alone, but they keep busting your ass. You just want to go about your business.”

  “Man, you don’t know nothing about me.”

  “No? You were born in Buckhead, Georgia outside of Atlanta, graduated high school two years ago, dropped out of community college. You tried Atlanta, but got arrested twice for drugs and once for solicitation. That’s when you decided to move your pretty little ass to the Big Apple, ending up with a loser named Taiwan Johnson, a piece of shit drug dealer who shouldn’t have assaulted a police officer and is doing five-to-ten upstate. He peddled meth and kept you high as a kite while you were his bitch, but when he got locked up, your supply got cut off. That’s when you started turning tricks on your own – and getting busted. Have I got that all about right?”

  Yolanda looked at the man skeptically, but didn’t contradict him.

  “So, you tell me. You got friends now who are taking care of you?”

  “Yeah. I got friends.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where are they? If you got such good friends, why aren’t they here bailing your ass out of jail or getting you a lawyer?”

  “Man, I don’t need no lawyer.”

  “OK. But when they let you out, where are you going to go, huh? You got family here in New York?”

  Yolanda sat passively, not replying.

  “I didn’t think so. You got somebody you knew from back home? Some friend who was up here when you came north? Somebody you thought you could crash with?”

  Yolanda’s face contorted into a scowl, but she stayed silent.

  “Sure. Everybody knows somebody in New York. But your somebody probably doesn’t like you doing drugs in their home, huh? Doesn’t want you bringing back men, huh? You have no crib where you can do what you want. Isn’t that right?”

  “So fucking what?” Yolanda blurted out. “Who the fuck are you coming in here and laying all this shit on me? Like you’re gonna adopt me? You wanna set me up with my own apartment or something? What are you, some pervy fucking sugar-daddy?”

  The man sat back again in the chair. “No, Yolanda. I’m not going to adopt you, but I can offer you a way to get what you want.”

  “Yeah?” Yolanda said skeptically, “and what do you get?”

  “I’ll explain that when you come see me.”

  “You’ll be waitin’ a long time, mister.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” He reached into his pocket, Yolanda was expecting to see a pack of cigarettes. Instead, he drew out a plastic bag containing a small pile of pale blue crystals. He held it up so she could see it clearly.

  Yolanda immediately got the hunger in her eyes, then frowned. “You settin’ me up? You tryin’ to pin some bullshit possession charge on me?”

  The man shook his head gently. “No, Yolanda. Busting you would be easy, but that’s not what I do.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small glass tube with a bulbous end and a hole in the top, along with a butane lighter. He then extracted two of the crystals and dropped them into the ball of the glass pipe. He handed it to Yolanda, along with the lighter. She hesitated for a moment, but then snatched the meth pipe, fired up the lighter, and held the flame under the ball until the crystal liquified and turned to a white gas. She inhaled. She held the vapor in her mouth, closing her eyes as the drug invaded her blood stream, conquering the neural passageways of her brain to induce the euphoria that she craved more than anything in the world. She continued to inhale until the bowl was dry. The man watched. Finally, she set the pipe and lighter on the table and tilted her head back toward the ceiling, reveling in the sensation.

  “Now, you see? Me giving you drugs inside the police station, that would be illegal.”

  Yolanda opened her eyes and looked at him with a half-smile on her face. “So, how about I rat you out and tell those officers out there that you gave me some?”

  “Go ahead. I doubt they’ll believe you. It’s your word against mine.”

  “You’re a cop, right?”

  “What I am is not important. What I can offer you is what you need to think about. Here.” The man reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a white business card with no name, no logo, just a phone number. “When you get out, call me.”

  Yolanda took the card, folded it in half, and stuffed it into her shoe. The man stood up, screeching the metal chair leg across the tile floor. As he turned to leave, Yolanda asked, “If I decide to call you, who do I ask for?”

  He opened the door and looked back over his shoulder. “Eddie,” he said, and was gone.

  Yolanda sat in the chair in silence, enjoying the high. Eventually, she was roused by the sound of the door opening. A uniformed officer escorted her back to the holding cell. An hour later, a female officer herded the detainees out of the cell so that they could file across the street to the night court for quickie arraignments, receive their desk summonses, and get processed for release. But as Yolanda reached the cell door, the cop held out her hand.

  “You Yolanda Rodriguez?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You go the other way,” said the officer, pointing toward the front desk. “Tell them your name and they’ll cut you loose.”

  Yolanda looked at the officer quizzically, then headed for the front door.

  Moments later she was free, walking away from trouble. After two blocks, she stopped, stooped, and removed the business card from her shoe. She looked at it, smiled, put it into her clutch, and walked into the New York night.

  Chapter 8 – Chasing Shadows

  Thursday, Feb. 14

  BY THURSDAY MORNING, Ray and Jason were dragging after working late all week on the Rosario case, but at least they had some progress to show for it. Unfortunately, they still had plenty left to do.

  They were huddled at Jason’s desk, sipping the morning’s first cup of coffee and looking at the Christine Barker file, when Sully walked past and stopped to ask what was up. They explained, causing Sully to stomp on the ground in frustration. “God dammit, you have one case to worry about right now. One! And it ain’t a dead drug addict. Now you put that aside, or better yet just close it up, and focus your attention where it needs to be.”

  Sully didn’t wait for a response before storming off to his office and shutting the glass door, glaring back out at Jason and Ray. They knew he was right. Christine Barker, was not a priority in the eyes of the press, the public, or the mayor. There was no need for them to waste time on her. At least for now.

  A half hour later, Jason got a phone call. It was Mr. Hwong from the dry-cleaning store in the Bronx. The old Asian man told Jason that he had received a heavy box of shirts on Monday night, and a man had come to pick it up on Wednesday, leaving him ten thousand dollars in cash.

  “Why didn’t you call me yesterday?” Jason asked, annoyed.

  “I was not sure. I am afraid. I am calling now.”

  “OK, thank you,” Jason regained a professional tone of voice. “We will come visit you this afternoon. You told me that the little white guy usually comes to pick up the money on Thursday nights, right?”

  “Yes, most times.”

  “OK. We’ll be there in a few hours.”

  Ж Ж Ж

  That evening, Jason and Ray, along with four uniformed officers, were staked out in a perimeter around the dry-cleaning store on Webster Avenue, a few blocks away from the Rosario bodega.

  “Hell of a way to spend Valentine’s Day, huh?” Ray said as he crushed his empty paper coffee cup.

  “It’s fine. Not like I had a date lined up,” Jason mused.

  “Speak for yourself. I had a hottie ready to eat my chocolate.”

  “I won’t comment on that,” Jason replied stiffly, before falling back into a tense silence.

  They were worried about how close they were to Fordham University and how much foot traffic there was, even after
dark on a chilly February night. They were several hours into overtime for the day, but Sully had given them a blank check because of the political sensitivity of the case. There had been nightly vigils at the bodega and chants calling for action by the police, although the attendance at these events had been declining. Al Sharpton and several other activists for the Black and Hispanic communities were keeping up the pressure on the local talk radio programs, and the mayor called Sullivan daily for updates on the investigation.

  Ray and Jason were huddled inside a bland brown panel van parked on 195th Street, waiting for the arrival of the man they assumed was “Mr. Ricky.” Luis Rosario had worked with a police sketch artist to come up with a picture of the mystery man, which included a scar on his face that should make him pretty easy to identify. They had shown it to the basketball players from Fordham. None of them could say for sure that it was the face of the guy they saw walking past them on that cold early morning, but several of them said it could be. Ray had predicted that Ricky would not show up so soon after the murder, but Jason was betting him a steak dinner that the money laundering business needed to maintain its schedule and that their guy would show up to collect the cash. If Ricky had shut down the operation, his men would not have delivered the package earlier in the week.

  The detectives had spoken to several more small-business owners in the neighborhood, but none of them would admit that they had also been victims of the same shake-down. It was pretty clear to both Ray and Jason that a few of them were not being truthful, but beating the information out of them didn’t seem good for public relations. Still, they had eyes on several of the local shops to see if there were any other stops on Mr. Ricky’s Thursday rounds.

  It was a pretty clever scheme. They were not technically extorting money from the business people. It was not exactly a protection racket, although it certainly had the same effect on the store owners. The stores were actually making a little money on the transactions, which most of them probably considered a boon rather than a burden. As long as they never looked inside the boxes, they could claim that if the invoice said ten thousand dollars’ worth of Beluga caviar, then that’s what they sold, and they made a five-hundred-dollar profit on the deal. Nothing illegal about that. And if there was ever a bust, the only people they could finger were the gang bangers and Ricky. The shop owners were scared of the gangs, so they would be reluctant to ID anyone, and even if the cops could bust one of the gang members, they were notoriously tight-lipped. If this was as organized an operation as it seemed, they would probably lawyer up and say nothing. They would do the time, if necessary, for the drug dealing, and then come out and get a promotion in the organization. Meanwhile, the money got laundered through the stores and came out clean.

  At half past nine, a thin white man walked down the Bronx sidewalk, heading in the direction of the dry cleaner, accompanied by three Black youths wearing black pants and jackets. The Black men looked to be well-muscled and as large as NFL linemen under their winter coats. The muscle took up a position outside Mr. Hwong’s store, which closed at ten o’clock, while the white guy went inside. The police had quickly installed two very hidden cameras and three wireless microphones inside the shop when they arrived that evening.

  Ray and Jason listened through earpieces while Ricky requested payment for his consignment. Mr. Hwong said he would get it and left his cash register for a moment, returning with a thick envelope. Ricky took the envelope and handed Mr. Hwong five one-hundred-dollar bills and a printed invoice. Then, without counting the cash, he turned to leave. He exited the store and nodded to his entourage. The men walked down Webster Avenue toward 197th Street.

  “Go!” Jason said urgently into his collar microphone. He and Ray hustled out of their surveillance van and sprinted in the direction of the store while two squad cars, tires squealing, skidded to a stop on the curb. Four officers jumped out with guns drawn, yelling at the four men to get on the ground, while pedestrians scattered in all directions like cockroaches from under a lifted pizza box.

  “What the fuck!” one of the large men shouted. He and his two companion linemen turned toward the officers, while Ricky ran the other direction. Jason saw the back of his black jacket as it turned the corner on 197th Street and headed north.

  The three big guys stared at the guns pointing at them, then raised their hands over their heads and started walking slowly toward the cops, who yelled at them to stop.

  Jason and Ray ran past the scrum on the sidewalk as the four uniformed officers seemed outnumbered by their three larger foes. Jason marveled at the savvy move by the three bodyguards, as he figured them to be. They knew that the cops, while armed, would not fire on unarmed men as long as they did not make any dangerous-looking moves. By the time the three linemen were a few feet from the armed cops, one of the officers lowered his weapon and stepped forward, ordering the big man to get on the ground. The officers were presumed to be capable of subduing unarmed civilians without resorting to gunfire.

  While the officers wrestled with the thugs, Jason took off after the man with the ten thousand dollars in his pocket.

  Jason leaned into his radio and called for all units to close off 197th street at Decatur Avenue. There were two more squad cars in the area standing by and he hoped they could hem in the runner. Meanwhile, the sleepy television film crews huddled in their vans outside the Rosario bodega came busting out, scrambling to get their equipment ready to film. They had been keeping warm while waiting for the live remotes they were going to do for the early local news shows, about how the dead man’s brother had re-opened the bodega just days after the murder. The news crews started getting text messages and calls within a few seconds of the encounter on Webster Avenue. The journalists and cameramen hustled toward the scene, three blocks away.

  When Jason rounded the corner, he saw a black and white with its blue lights flashing, parked at the top of the block, and he saw his quarry darting into the alley behind the Webster Avenue storefronts, back in the direction of 198th Street. Ray came skidding to a halt next to Jason, calling out, “Where is he?”

  “He’s running down the alley!” Jason shouted, removing his gun from its holster and running up the block. “He’s a fast sucker.” Jason stopped at the alley’s threshold, not knowing what he would find around the corner. He held out his gun and motioned for Ray to go ahead of him, ready to put down cover fire. As soon as Ray rounded the bend, Jason stepped out and held his gun ready, but saw nothing to shoot at.

  Jason and Ray carefully paced their way down the alley with their guns held in outstretched arms, scanning in all directions for places that Ricky could be hiding. There was no sign of life. Jason called into his microphone for the backup units to fan out and try to seal off escape routes.

  The alley ended at a gravel and dirt square where two large trees sprouted from the ground, giving shade to a courtyard with parked cars squeezed into every available space. Ahead, Jason saw a circular structure that looked like a hot tub, and to the left a thin passage ran between two buildings, with more parked cars lining the paved driveway. Jason motioned to Ray to go forward while he went left. When Jason reached the street, he looked left, where the squad car still sat at attention. He turned right and ran down the sidewalk, reaching the next intersection and looking in all directions, but not seeing any sign of their suspect.

  At that moment, Jason heard one gunshot coming from his right, then two more shots in quick succession. He ran down the block and saw their suspect, in his black jacket, getting into the rear door of a dark SUV. As soon as the door closed, the window came down; a gun came out and fired off four quick shots back in the direction of the alley where Jason had left Ray. The SUV’s tires screeched as it pulled away, with more gunshots coming out as it moved quickly south. As Jason watched, Ray came running out of the alley, firing toward the departing vehicle. A bullet whizzed past Ray’s head and pinged against a metal light pole six inches away.

  Jason yelled, “Get down, you idiot!” R
ay got into a crouch and continued firing at the SUV until his magazine was empty. The car turned left, abandoning the three bodyguards who were still engaged with the officers a half-block away. Jason screamed into his collar that the suspects were in a black SUV heading East on Webster Avenue at 198th Street. He and Ray headed back toward the melee, where they found the news crews frantically trying to set up and get video as the four original officers, aided by two more who had since arrived, tried to get handcuffs on the three big men who had run interference for Ricky. Seeing the camera crews, Ray and Jason stopped and reversed course, heading back toward their parked surveillance van.

  “Are you fucking crazy, Ray?” Jason scolded. “You fired, what? Fifteen rounds on a public street where bystanders could be hit, and you stood there in the line of fire where you could have been hit. Do you have a death wish?”

  “Fuck you,” Ray retorted. “I had a shot and I took it. I didn’t hit anybody.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “You’re going to get yourself, and maybe me, killed if you act like that.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Ray said dismissively, snapping a fresh magazine into his department-issued Glock.

  “Yeah, sure you will,” Jason muttered to himself.

  Chapter 9 – Distant Connections

  Friday, Feb. 15

  THAT FRIDAY AFTERNOON, after his physical therapy session, Mike strolled into the medical examiner’s office to pick up Michelle. The doctor was sitting at her gray metal desk at the far end of the lab, underneath a large poster of the periodic table of elements. When she saw Mike, she jumped up and walked quickly to meet him before he got halfway across the room. He stopped and waited for her arrival, being careful not to give her a hug or kiss here in her work space. They had an arrangement to be only professional colleagues when in the office – at least when there were other people around. He could see by the look in her eyes and the wicked smile on her face that she had something on her mind. He smiled at her and asked, “Do you want to talk about it here, or over dinner?”