“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 nodded 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.”
“This guy, on the other hand,” Bloch continued, pulling out a second photo and passing it to his left, “would stand out on Mars. Martin Julio Benavides, a.k.a. Cuchillito, a.k.a. Chillo. He’s the real deal, lady and gentlemen. Twenty-eight years old, five-six, one-fifty. Time in for manslaughter, battery, rape, weapons possession, you name it. We think he was a heavy borrowed from a San Antonio
mara
to put the hit on a half-dozen cops around the Metro area to, ah, facilitate Rodriguez’s dreams of expansion. I want him. Very badly. Very
very
badly. If it were a trade between pulling in Rodriguez or Chillo, I’d settle for Chillo. But we’re going to nab both.”
“How are we going to pick him out?” McDonald asked. The pictures hadn’t reached him yet. Bloch gestured for Rhee to hold the photos up. Chillo’s sleepy-eyed, nightmare face, covered in tattoos, stared back at us.
“Jesus fuck,” McDonald said. “Okay, I’ll remember him.”
“Weapons?” Huston asked.
Bloch glanced at Rhee. “Detective, you might have better intel.”
Rhee’s expression didn’t change, but I could tell he was pleased Bloch had deferred to him. “Rodriguez is probably packing or has access, but I don’t see him throwing down. He’s lasted this long because he uses his head more than his stones. He knows, or thinks he knows, he can get a lawyer to bail him out in a day. Why get shot by a cop when he could be out tomorrow?”
“What about Scarface?” McDonald asked.
“Chillo? Different story,” Rhee said. He glanced at Bloch. “Would this be his third fall?”
“Yes.”
Rhee shook his head. “Prison don’t hold the same fear for these dudes that it does for regular crooks. Back in San Salvador, it’s like Holiday Inn to them. Still, Chillo’s probably had a taste of the good life. No reason to go to jail, now, right? So, he ain’t going to roll over for us. He’s a dangerous motherfucker. Expect the worst.”
“How do we know they’re in the same pad?” Ramsey asked Bloch.
“Detective Rhee, here, has been keeping an eye on things for me. It’s pretty clear that they want to ship Chillo out ASAP, back to San Antonio where he came from. He’s been in NOVA for a couple weeks enjoying himself. Smoking dope, screwing, doing his thing. But he’s their smoking gun. We’ve got intel that Rodriguez is getting nervous having him around. So he’s keeping him close, real close, until they can get him in a car bound for Texas.”
“Civilians present?” This was from Carlson.
“There are three girls who hang around. Maria Paseo is Rodriguez’s girlfriend, the other two are passed among the gang members. All three are probably there. And there’s at least one child under two, a little boy. He’s Rodriguez’s kid by the girlfriend.”
Carlson grimaced. “Complicated.”
Bloch nodded. “Not easy. That’s why I asked specifically for you all. Every one of you has a reputation for being solid. I need us to be on the same page: we cuff Rodriguez, keep the non-coms quiet and safe, and dogpile on Chillo when we see him.”
Everyone was quiet then, for a second, thinking. Then I felt their attention swing to me. Bloch did, too, and met it head-on. “Marty here has thirty years of experience with the MPDC, which is more than any two or three of us put together. I realize it’s highly unorthodox to have him in the crew, but we wouldn’t be conducting the raid without Marty’s legwork in the investigation that’s led to here. He’ll be sixth man in the stack. With orders,” Bloch raised his eyebrows meaningfully at me, “to play it cool and let us do the heavy lifting. We don’t want to screw up his retirement.”
“I’ll try not to shoot myself,” I said.
“Any questions?” Bloch asked, spreading both hands and looking at each member in turn. “Okay, let’s—”
Rhee’s cell phone rang, a jangly hip-hop beat. He snatched at it and checked the screen, then emphatically raised a hand for quiet as he answered. We watched him, puzzled. Rhee spoke rapid-fire Spanish, his answers clipped and staccato. At one point he turned around and scanned the street bordering the Safeway, his eyes roving back and forth. I could see Ramsey listening intently as Rhee spoke. About halfway through his call, she swore softly, an expression of worry and surprise on her face. Rhee spoke a little more, forced a laugh, then hung up.
“Someone made us?” Ramsey asked him when he put the phone away.
Rhee nodded, concerned. “That was one of the chicos I got contact with. Not one of Rodriguez’s crew, but deals with him. He called me and told me to stay away from the MLA tonight, ’cause he was cruising with some homies and told me there’s a bunch of narcs in a Safeway parking lot ready to bust the place. Didn’t want me to get shot if I was out chatting up the Latinas.”
“He’s talking about us,” Ramsey said.
“He just drove by and saw us?” Bloch said, stunned. Our heads swiveled around, scanning the parking lot, as if the guy were hiding behind a shopping cart.
“Two minutes ago, man,” Rhee said.
“You think he’ll warn Rodriguez?” I asked.
“Don’t know, Singer. He might. To earn some points, maybe? Or he might just stay away, hoping not to get caught in the crossfire.” Rhee consulted Bloch. “What do you want to do? Cancel and rewind?”
Bloch bit his lower lip and thought for a second. He looked at me.
I shrugged. “Might be our only chance at Chillo.”
Bloch turned to the group. “Fuck it. Get your vests and guns. It’s on.”