Mirror Image

by Ice-T

  Casey saw that Shin and Champa looked a bit hesitant, given that they’d never tried this tech out before. “Don’t sweat it, guys. We’re gonna do a lotta practice runs on this, and by tomorrow A.M., you’ll have it nailed. Besides, there’s only one thing that can trip us up.”

  “What’s that?” said Shin.

  “If they don’t have their Bluetooth turned on, then we’re gonna have to go to Plan B, which will be trickier.”

  Casey could tell that Champa had already figured out Plan B. “Da-yamn, nigga, please tell me you’re not suggestin’ that we boost their phone, load the program, then give it back to ’em?”

  Casey sat back silently so that this concept sank in with everyone. The room was pretty quiet until Shin broke the silence. “Casey … well, if we do that on the fly, shit, it’s just—really risky, man. I mean, boosting’s never been my thing.”

  “Look, we’re not gonna just do it ‘on the fly.’ We’ll see what happens tomorrow, and go from there.”

  The guys in the room breathed a slight sigh of relief. Casey liked dropping bombs like this every so often—it kept everyone on their toes and focused.

  He continued. “We’re gonna target guys in the early A.M., around seven fifteen, when they’ll be leaving for their shift, and then at four P.M., when they get off. The only way we’re gonna know that we’ve nailed a target is when Jacob starts seeing info pop up on the computer.”

  Champa jumped in. “How do we know they’ll be workin’ the eight-to-four shift and not the four-to-twelve?”

  “We don’t, but given that they’re all pretty senior guys, chances are they have the A.M. shift.”

  Casey turned to Jacob. “The minute you see one of our targets get activated, I want you to run the phone through its paces to make sure it works okay. Once you’re satisfied, let us know.”

  “That’s cool, just text me a heads-up, and I’ll be watching for it,” Jacob said.

  “No problem. Okay, Champa, you definitely gonna need to get a more low-profile ride for these maneuvers.”

  “Not a problem—my girl has a Lincoln with tinted windows I can use,” Champa replied.

  “All of you need to be wearin’ sunglasses and hats anytime you’re tailin’ one of these cats—we want this as covert as possible. A’ight, Al, show Shin and Champa how to tag these phones, then we gonna run some trials.”

  Al P. got up and went through the process a bunch of times with the guys to make sure there were no hiccups. Then they hit the streets and did some run-throughs with Casey holding a target phone. After an hour of that, they started picking random targets. Al P. was pretty quick when it came to the whole process, Shin picked it up pretty fast, but Champa was pathetic, to say the least. Tech just wasn’t that nigga’s forte. Whenever they’d tag someone, they reached out to Jacob and gave him the heads-up, and he’d confirm their success a few minutes later.

  Shin tagged a heavyset kid and dialed Jacob. “I got someone, you see anything?”

  After thirty seconds, Jacob said, “Yeah, I got him on the grid, he’s on Walton Avenue heading towards 172nd.”

  Casey looked at Shin and Al P. and said, “I want you to tag up as many people as possible in the next couple hours, at least thirty. I wanna make sure our system can handle it.”

  For the next three hours, the guys went hard at it, tagging people under every circumstance. They even tagged people while they were driving next to them, or riding the subway.

  Casey reached out to Jacob: “How many targets we up to?”

  “Lemme see…” Casey could hear him counting them off. “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty … twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-nine … thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four. Okay, there’s thirty-four targets active.”

  “Okay, bet.” Casey pulled the guys in. “Come on, we’re heading back to Jacob’s. If you can hit anyone up on the way, do it. I wanna push this shit as far as possible.”

  On the drive back, Shin and Al P. were targeting people like they were playing a video game. When they got to Jacob’s, they went up the stairs and walked into their own command center. Everyone was pretty pumped up to see this shit in action.

  Jacob sat in front of six forty-two-inch monitors, his fingers a blur on his keyboard, as well as controlling other monitors using verbal commands with a Bluetooth earpiece. Every monitor had a ton of open windows with conversations being transcribed, as well as maps with red, green, and blue dots representing the targets. The guys stood there transfixed by what they’d accomplished.

  Champa was the first to speak. “That is some incredible shit right there, I got about six broads I need to unleash this shit on.” Everyone in the room laughed, probably because they were all thinking the same thing.

  Casey looked at all the words for all the conversations being transcribed out by the voice-recognition software. As alerts went off, passages would be highlighted. Fuckin’ amazin’ … On one of the monitors was a map of the Bronx, covered in all three colors of dots, some moving and some stationary.

  “What do the red, green, and blue dots represent?” Casey asked.

  “Red dots are people who aren’t speaking on their phones, green ones are having conversations, and the blue dots are cameras I can tap into.”

  “Let’s activate one of those red dots and make their phone a live mic. Pick one near a video camera, and let’s see if we can get a visual.”

  Jacob took the cursor and clicked on one of the red dots near Claremont Park. The dot turned green, and seconds later there was audio. Casey could tell the person was near the playground by the background noise of kids laughing and yelling. Jacob then clicked on the blue dot to get a visual. The men all saw kids playing on swings and running around; the picture was pretty clear. They then heard two women talking.

  “—I tol’ the nigga to get outta here with that bullshit, he thinks he can come over and get some of this pussy, nigga, please!”

  “That’s right. Then what he say?”

  “He tried to tell me he was late with my child support ’cause he got ‘laid off.’ But I know the nigga’s selling weed on the side, so he ain’t broke.”

  On the monitor, Champa pointed to two sistas on a park bench. “Can you zoom in on them?”

  Jacob placed his cursor on the women and pressed the down key on his keyboard. “This is just a virtual zoom. It’ll work pretty good, but the closer it gets, the worse the picture resolution will be.”

  The women on the video kept talking, completely unaware they had a rapt audience twelve blocks away.

  “Mmmm hmm—”

  “Then I tol’ him I was gonna call Child Services, and he started screaming and shit, saying, ‘Bitch, why you got to go there, a nigga’s doing the best he can—’”

  Casey looked at Al P. “Lemme guess—this is one of yo bitches we just tapped into?”

  Shin, Champa, and even Al P. all started laughing their asses off. Al P. was probably laughing ’cause he was glad his tech was working. Casey told Jacob to bring up the transcript of the conversation. When they looked at it, the computer was able to decipher about 50 percent of the conversation from the park, but on the phone calls they were tappin’, it showed 95 percent accuracy.

  Jacob turned to Casey and said, “When you got so much background noise, it’s gonna make it really hard for the computer to get better than that. If they were in a quieter place, the transcription quality would increase dramatically.”

  “You want to get some of the guys to monitor the live conversations, Case?” Shin asked.

  “Nah, it’s too risky to let anyone else know what we doing and where we doing it at. We’ll just let the computer do the best it can, and if it isn’t workin’ out, we’ll have to address it later.” They went through everyone’s phones to listen to voice mails and look at e-mails and texts. Everything was tight. The whole setup was very impressive.

  Champa sat back on the couch and said, “Man, the pigs are gonna be so fucked up, they don’t stand a chance.”

 
“Let’s not get too confident—there’s still plenty of things that can go wrong this early in the game,” Casey said. He sat in the chair next to Champa, his eyes still on the various flows of information. He watched the monitors for another minute, then turned to Al. “If we turn their phone into a live mic, how long will the battery last?”

  “On most phones, you’re talking six to seven hours,” Al said.

  Casey ran through the list in his head. “Okay, Jacob, I want you to let this run for another few hours and monitor it. Once you’re completely satisfied, you can delete these people.”

  Al spoke up: “Before you do that, you oughta know that the last person I tagged was a cop. We should listen to him.”

  Shin looked at Al sidelong. “Damn, nigga, why didn’t you say so?”

  Al P. shrugged. “If it didn’t work for any reason, I didn’t wanna call attention to the fact that I’d tagged a pig.”

  Jacob got on his keyboard and sorted the targets by the time they were tagged and zeroed in on the cop’s phone. By the sound of it, the two cops were in their squad car.

  “—can you believe this little black bastard?”

  “Whaddaya expect from a piece of shit like that? The bottom line is he’s gonna get what he deserves. He may not have been guilty today, but he was sure as hell guilty some other day.” The cop then addressed the suspect: “Ya see this, this little Baggie of coke is gonna lock you away for a nice little bit.”

  Casey and the guys could hear that some kid was in the backseat of the car, his voice cracking as he pleaded with the cops. “Come on, man, please! I didn’t do nuthin, don’t do this, man, this’ll be my third strike, come on, please! Why you wanna frame me man, I didn’t do nuthin’!”

  Casey looked at Jacob. “Can you tap into this cruiser’s video to get a visual?”

  Jacob’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “The visual will either be the guy in the back or out the front windshield, it may pop up on their screens, alert them that someone is—”

  “I don’t give a fuck. I wanna see the guy in the back.”

  Jacob looked at his monitor and said, “There are thirty-two cars out right now, so I just gotta match up the location with the NYPD computers.” Jacob started going through the online map while everyone listened to what was happening.

  “Look, boy, it’s not my problem that you got two strikes. We both know you been doing dirt, so shut the fuck up and enjoy the scenery, ’cause you ain’t never gonna see the outside again.”

  Casey could hear the cop go on the radio and call in that they were bringing in a drug dealer they’d just busted.

  “Four Seven Adam to Central.”

  “Four Seven Adam, go,” said a woman on the radio speaker.

  “One under for possession to the Forty-seventh Precinct.”

  “Yo, fuck that, you know that’s bullshit! Why you doing this? Come on, man, I got a kid!”

  When Casey heard that, his fist clenched, and the desire for revenge exploded inside him. The whole room knew this BS went on every damn day, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow.

  Jacob screamed, “I got it! I got it.”

  Everyone focused on the screen: the video was black-and-white and showed the back of the car, where a black kid was cuffed and writhing on the cruiser’s seat.

  “Fuck you and shut up! Everyone’s got kids. I tell ya what, when your boy’s old enough, we’ll bust him, too, so yous could be in the joint together. What’s his name, I can put him on my list.”

  His partner started laughing his ass off. “Dayton, you’re one cruel sonofabitch. Oh shit, you’re gonna give this nigga a heart attack.”

  The kid in the backseat lost his mind when he heard this and started screaming. “Please, man—I was just hanging out! I’m sorry, I ran ’cause I was scared! Come on, don’t do this!”

  “It’s a little too late for that, your kind needs to see that they can’t outrun us ever!”

  The kid became enraged and was bucking in the backseat, trying to get free as he screamed, “You know what, fuck you, fuck both a you! Y’all a bunch a cracker faggots!” Then the kid started spitting through the metal partition.

  Casey and the guys watched this all go down. Casey said, “Damn, this nigga’s gonna get dug out for that, damn!”

  Both cops started screaming once they felt his spit hit the back of their necks. “Hey, hey, hey! Stop that, goddamnit! Bellamy, pull over in that alley now!”

  The guys heard the car screech to a halt and one of the doors open and heard one of the officers scream at the other. “Dayton, what the fuck you doing don’t be stupid, man!”

  Bellamy didn’t respond; the guys could hear the back door open and see the cop’s prey start pleading for mercy. The video showed the kid on his back, frantically shaking his head back and forth, his feet up toward the door.

  “Come on, man, what the fuck, just let me be, man, don’t kill me, man!”

  The guys couldn’t see the officer, but they heard his demonic voice calmly say, “I ain’t gonna kill you, nigga, I’m just gonna give you a little electroshock therapy.”

  The suspect started jerking around like crazy, obviously scared out of his mind. He pleaded with the officer, but to no avail. “Don’t Tase me, please don’t Tase me!”

  The next thing they saw was his body jerk; then he started screaming over the snap and crackle of the Taser hitting its target again and again as the officer administered his punishment. Casey and the guys tensed up when they heard that sound. They were all pissed and swearing at the screen.

  The officer stopped after a minute, and his cruel voice said, “You feelin’ pretty badass now, boy? Huh? Dumb motherfucker.”

  The officer blasted that poor dude again, laughing like he was a kid seeing a funny cartoon, until his partner screamed at him. “Bellamy, enough! You’re gonna give that bastard a fuckin’ heart attack!”

  “Okay, okay … Ahhh shit, would you look at that? This nigger just pissed himself! Goddamnit, what a mess!”

  His partner was heated and said, “Just get in the car, Bellamy, fuck!”

  The guys could see the suspect going through hell; he was groaning and delirious from his torture.

  “Got anything else smart you wanna say?… I didn’t think so.” After the cop said that, he chuckled, then started laughing hard.

  His partner said, “What the fuck’s so funny—you coulda killed him and then what?”

  His partner responded, trying to catch his breath. “That’s one fried chicken,” and then they both burst out laughing.

  Champa was seething and looked like he was about to explode. “Yo, we need to go handle those muthafuckas, Crush.”

  Casey looked at Champa and everyone in the room; like him, they were all very pissed off and shaken by what they’d heard and seen. He calmly took a deep breath, then exhaled and said, “These muthafuckas are gonna get theirs, and my man that’s been fucked over’s gonna get justice and get paid, believe that. But we got a lot bigger fish to fry, and we can’t tip our hand yet. I know it’s fucked up … but now is not the time. I guarantee, though, that we gonna put a lot of these muthafuckas on front street and hang ’em high.”

  The guys were all silent. Crush knew they realized he was right, but it sucked seeing a brotha get fucked over like that right in front of their eyes, and not be able to do a goddamn thing about it. They’d all experienced police brutality, and knew what it was like to feel powerless and terrorized.

  Casey broke the silence. “Champa, reach out to Alejandro and tell him he’s got a pro bono case he has to take, this brotha needs to be represented. Also, tell him to assume whatever he’s saying is no bullshit and leave it at that. When we leak this tape, Alejandro will be kissin’ my ass for putting him in place. This guy’s gonna have a helluva lawsuit and get laced with millions by the time we’re done.”

  Champa nodded and dialed the mouthpiece to let him know his services were needed.

  Casey addressed everyone in the room. “This
is a good object lesson. Always, always, keep this in mind as you go about doin’ our business. These muthafuckas are gangstas in blue with badges, and if this shit gets out before we’re ready, we’re dead. Okay, Jacob, delete everyone we tagged today except for this pig. Burn the audio and video to a DVD—I wanna make this look slick for TV. Get pictures of everyone so when we don’t have video, we have their faces on the screen with their badge numbers. Also, have the text of what they sayin’ transcribed on the bottom of the screen so there’s no mistaking who’s sayin’ what.”

  Casey stood in front of everyone, amped to the max. He knew his plan would work; it was just a matter of making sure the flow and quality of the intel were tight and quick. “Today was a good day, and in more ways than one, ’cause it showed the power we have. There’s a lot of shit that could go wrong, but there’s a lot that can go right, too, so be on your game at all times. Remember, this is a complicated puzzle, and we can’t afford to have a single piece missing. Also, I know there will be a temptation to speak out on this shit, but we cannot, at all costs. If it gets out too soon, it’ll fuck everything up. It’s just a matter of time before the pigs figure shit out, and they will figure it out, hopefully only after we put them on blast. But until that happens, we need to keep this on the DL. Okay, now, for tomorrow…”

  Casey pulled out a folder and laid out seven photos of the detectives. On the bottom of each photo was a home address. Casey separated four of the photos into a group.

  “These four live in Lower Manhattan in an eight-block radius from each other. Two actually live in the same building.” Casey pointed to a picture of a heavyset bald white male and another white guy that was also heavyset but had a crew cut and mustache. Casey’s phone buzzed, but he ignored it and kept talking. “Tomorrow at seven A.M. sharp, Al, you and I are gonna be in front of that building. I’ll be in the Escalade, but you’ll be on the street. Hopefully these guys will leave together so we can double down and nail them both. You’re gonna need to stagger when you hit their phone up, though.”