The Disposables (15 page)

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.

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.”

Robby spun in the seat. “This is going to be better than I thought. We just kicked over a hornet's nest.”

“Man, let me out.” The Crip in the back said, “Doan take me in dere inta that.”

He knew in situations where deputies get in over their heads, the responding units don't differentiate the good and bad and beat down anything that moves.

Robby reached over with his foot and slammed it down on top of mine holding it to the floor after I'd eased off a little. The car leapt out, grabbing asphalt faster and faster.

“It's going to be crazy when we get there,” Robby said. “Here, take this.” He handed me his sheriff's gold star on a chain and I put it around my neck. It felt strange, warm to the touch as if a religious medallion. I didn't want it, not at all. There had been a time when I worshipped the fraternity. He was right though, without it I became fair game.

Ten years ago we would've just driven over the curb and into the projects. Nickerson was now surrounded by ten-foot wrought iron and could now only be accessed by a few streets.

I took a couple of fast corners, the tires squealing, the passengers inside getting batted around. It didn't stop Robby, “Tell me who's throwing gas and lightin' up the people for initiation.”

“Man, what the fuck are you talkin' about? Is this what all this shit's about? You're crazy. Swear to gawd, you're off your rock.”

“Gimme something good and I'll let you go. We know it's Grape Street doin' it.”

“Someone's playin' you a fool. You got it all wrong.”

Robby leaned over and punched the Crip right in the chest. The thump sounded hollow and followed by a long groan. The Crip lay across the backseat.

We were in the Nickerson driving west on 115th.

“There. There.” Robby yelled and pointed to a throng of blacks moving toward two deputies with their guns out, a suspect down at their feet. They stood back to back right in the center of a quad area. I went over the curb and headed right toward them, fishtailing, kicking up grass clods. Robby reached under his dash, down by my right leg, and hit the siren to disperse the crowd and to keep the deputies from misinterpreting who we were and opening up on us. A half-empty forty-ounce beer bottle bounced off our car. Yellow foam rolled down across the windshield.

Robby said, “This is going to get real shitty before it's over.”

The crowd moved out of the way for us. The deputies held their guns at the ready. They would shoot into the crowd if it got any worse. I recognized Carter Bingham, a good old white boy transplanted from Tennessee who'd finally made it off of patrol and into the Gang Enforcement Team. They called him Pig Farmer because of his faint accent. He wouldn't let the mob overrun them, not without taking a few with them.

The guy on the ground was shot in the back. He was dressed in denim pants and a Raiders jacket with a purple rag tied to his belt. He didn't look too hurt the way he thrashed around in the handcuffs, screaming bloody murder how he was shot in the back and that he was going to sue.

Robby popped the trunk button, jumped out, pulled a riot gun from the back, and racked it. The loud, metallic noise made everyone in the crowd moving toward us freeze. “Get his ass in the car. Let's get the hell out of here.” Half a red brick hit the windshield and shattered it. Red grit mixed with yellow beer foam and clung to the spiderweb damage. The Gang Enforcement Team deputies didn't have to be told twice. They each grabbed an arm of their victim, drag-carried him over to the car, and threw him in on top of the other guy. Then Robby got in standing on the running board with his door open. The deputies followed suit in the back doors. I gunned it, spinning a brodie. The crowd took their cue. Rocks and bottles rained down. As we bounced back onto the street in our headlong flight, LAPD rolled in six cars deep. Behind them came all of Century Station Patrol, their heads large in the windshields from riot helmets. All of them braked, pulled U-turns, and exited. We met up in the shopping center parking lot on Wilmington where the ambulance came to tend to the wounded Crip gang member bleeding in the backseat. They put him on a gurney and rolled him out.

I stood by the car watching the other crook while Robby met with some of the Operation Safe Streets guys wearing jeans and green raid jackets. I was close enough to see the LAPD guys staring at Robby as he talked animatedly with his hands. I cringed at what they might be telling him and confirmed it when his hands froze in mid-explanation. He slowly turned to look over at me. OSS was a tough, well-organized group. They had their informants. They gleaned the intel fast, told Robby his info was bad. Robby figured it out, how I had stabbed him in the back, made him a horse's ass in front of everyone. Mobilized half the department, got a gang member shot, and almost started a full-blown riot. I held his gaze until he broke and gave his men additional instructions. He would try to bolster his position, bully his way out of the embarrassing situation, insist he wasn't wrong.

Other LAPD officers joined the group staring at Robby. Some pointed at him.

OSS and GET started to break up and head for their cars when a string of unmarked cars slid into the parking area. Unmarked with tinted windows. The way they rolled in told it all, the elite Violent Crimes Team. They pulled up in adjoining parking slots and stopped in unison, one after the other as if they had choreographed the maneuver. The men were the same from the other night at Mr. Cho's. Mack, in Levi's, t-shirt, his shoulder holster with a large-framed automatic, got out and swaggered over, not with the rest, but over to Robby who stood alone, not taking his eyes off of me, waiting. When he came in range, Robby made a quick-step over to Mack and with one hand grabbed him behind the neck and escorted him away from the others, away from their ears. Mack hunched his thick shoulders and knew better than to resist, even though Robby was no match for him. Mack, if he put his mind to it, could break off Robby's arms one at a time and beat him senseless.

The throng of LAPD officers watched with an unusual intensity.

Mack finally had enough and shrugged Robby off. They were far enough away. Their words, though loud, were still indiscernible.

The urge to hop in Robby's unmarked car with the Crip still in the back was almost too strong to suppress.

Robby pulled back to strike Mack. Mack brought his arm up to block. Robby stopped himself before he let the genie out of the bottle, one he could never put back. Not with all the LAPD witnesses. Robby and Mack both took some deep breaths and calmed down. More words were exchanged, Mack doing most of the listening. Then they turned, looked at me, and smiled.

Time to go. I turned to get in Robby's car, make a wild dash for it, but had waited too long. My attention had been focused on Robby while the other members of the Violent Crimes Team casually, instinctively, deployed in easy striking range. They crowded all around, their arms folded across their chests, leaning up against both sides of the car where I stood.

Robby shook Mack's hand. They both walked over, their path right by the LAPD officers who had just started to disband now that all the action was over. They stopped to take a close look at Robby. After Robby passed, they moved on, talking in low whispers, shaking their heads.

Robby stopped in front of me, his eyes angry. He didn't take them off of me as Mack came around and took the crook out of the backseat, took the cuffs off, and let him go. The other members without prompting went back to their cars, got in, and left.

Robby and I were alone in the vacant parking lot. He continued to stare.

“What?” I said.

“This what you learn in the joint? How to fuck over your friend? A friend who has gone out of his way to help you?”

His words hurt. I wanted to throw my ace, the fact that his real motivation was to find the kids I had stashed, that he was working with the FBI, and if successful, he'd put me away for the rest of my life. Tell him to kiss my black ass. Instead, I stood and gave back his stare.

He shook his head. “The bitch didn't know a thing, did she? You fed me a woof cookie that I gobbled up and went off half-cocked, without covering her because I trusted the information.”

I said nothing.

“You let her get away.”

I walked from the car, leaving him, waiting for him to draw a blackjack or a gun. Come up on me fast, jack me in the head, take me in. Give me the BMF treatment, get me to talk, tell him what he really wanted to know, where the kids were. But that was the point of this whole charade. I knew where they were, and they didn't, and nothing they could do to me could make me tell him. Robby, more than anyone else, knew that. I didn't know how they had gotten on to me, but somehow they had.

I'd made a slip somewhere along the way and I think I knew where. When they ran all the information in the computer, my name came up. Along with what I had done to my grandson's father, the crime that put me on the criminal path was also the last piece to the puzzle. The crime that put me in prison was the key. A blind man could've figured it out. They were only guessing, that's why they surveilled the market where I worked. All the countersurveillance I had done, the codes, and cutouts I'd put in play that Marie thought was pure paranoia had been exactly what had kept her and me and Dad out of the can. But, most important, it kept the kids safe a little longer.

Robby didn't come after me as I walked across the parking lot. He had simply put me back into play. He'd given the Violent Crimes Team a head start to get set up, ready to follow me. He had also forgiven Mack for his little transgression, coming over to Chantal's apartment. Worst of all, Robby had just unchained Mack. For a brief second I wondered if the whole thing wasn't all a setup. I looked up in the air, trying to see the cherry-red light of a helicopter and heard the careful footfalls as Robby slowly followed. He said, “I sent the team out to find her, told 'em do whatcha gotta do.” Another BMF idiom that meant they were free to do what was necessary in order to make the streets safe, which included deadly force with impunity.

I stopped, wanting to turn, walk back, and beat his face in. Instead, I couldn't look at him. I said, “You know what this means, don't you?”

He said, “That it's on?”

“That's right.”

“I was hoping you'd say that. You forget, I taught you everything you know.”

I turned, the reflection in his eyes a strange yellow in the sodium vapor light of the parking lot. “Did you teach me to put contraband cigarettes filled with rock cocaine behind my ear and act like an out-of-control madman in front of an allied agency that will surely call Internal Affairs to report a dope-smoking lieutenant? When IA calls you in for the interview, give them my name, I'll give them a statement and character reference.”