Mirror Image

by Ice-T

  Casey peeped the time on his phone—he really needed to bounce and definitely didn’t feel like talkin’ to one of Rono’s old hos. Everyone on the street knew his past history with the man, and after that sucka was taken out, there’d been a lot of chatter about “who did it.”

  “You know, I’m always in play, looking at a few things.”

  The girl laughed and said, “Same old Casey, keeping them cards close to his chest. So look, give a sista a call—it’d be nice to hang with a real brotha for a change.”

  She dug around in her purse and pulled out a pen and a piece of paper. She carefully wrote her number down and handed it to Casey. He took it and put it into his pocket. Her face got serious and she said, “I’ma keep it real, Crush—I always liked you, you were always cool with me. I thought that Rono shit was foul. I don’t know your situation, but … I’m here, ya know, so reach out if ya feel me.”

  “Cool, it was nice bumpin’ into you, Charlene. Tell your sister I said hello. I got to bounce to a meeting, but I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”

  The woman’s face showed that she was a bit deflated, but Casey handled it in a fly way so that she wouldn’t be salty. He got up, gave her a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek, and rolled to St. James Park, which was two minutes away.

  * * *

  When he pulled up, he saw Petrosian’s Benz and a fresh pair of goons. Casey parked behind him and got out of his whip. As he came over, Petrosian’s two security guys gave him a hard look and moved to intercept. Casey hated guys like this, all muscle and no brains. That’s one reason the two previous guys are tits up in some cemetery.

  Petrosian saw him, said something in Armenian, and the guys stood down. Petrosian extended his hands and said, “Hello, Casey, thanks for meeting me on such short notice. Let’s go over here.”

  Alek led Casey to a bench, where the two men sat while his son played basketball. “I have something coming up next week, a very big job, and I want you to be a part of it. I like your style, and given that I’m down a couple men because of that business at the restaurant, I could use a man with your skills.”

  Casey was more than a bit surprised by the offer, particularly given their last conversation. He stared at the Armenian. “So, you wanna form a partnership?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. Let’s say I’d like to hire you as an independent contractor.”

  Casey’s criminal curiosity was piqued; it couldn’t hurt to find out more about what Petrosian was up to, even though he wasn’t interested. “Okay, so what’s the job?”

  “I’m afraid that I can’t give you a lot of details today, but I can tell you that you’ll walk away with a hundred K for two days’ work.”

  Casey stared even harder at Petrosian in disbelief. He knew if he was offering him that much chedda, then he was making at least ten times that, maybe twenty. It also seemed strange that he’d need advice on anything unless it fell out of his regular domain of expertise. Or maybe it was all just an elaborate setup. “So, what do you need me to do on this job you can’t tell me about?”

  “I’d like you to look over the plan, tell me if you think I’ve left anything out, and then help me execute it.” Alek talked to Casey while watching his son play ball.

  Casey looked at him and said, “First, I can’t commit to any deal until I know what it is. Second, I may need more time to review your plan, especially as it seems like it’s a big job and there’s a lot at stake. Third, I want to know where you’re at with what we previously discussed.”

  “I won’t be able to give you any details until Monday morning. As far as more time to review, this is time sensitive, so if you decided to do it, I’ll need you to work within those parameters. Lastly, as far as your proposal, I need more time on that, and I want to know who else is down with this and your proposed details of how it would work.”

  Now Casey was the one staring at the kids playing ball. “Monday A.M. ain’t gonna to work for me.”

  “Why not? The clock’s ticking on this and there’s a lot of bread on the table for both of us.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but that’s when I’m meeting my parole officer.”

  Petrosian took a beat before replying. “That’s must cramp the style of a man like yourself.”

  “Yeah, well that’s the way it is. There are certain consequences in this game. Eventually that silver ball always goes down that black hole, that is, unless you can rig it otherwise.”

  “And that’s what you think you can do?” Petrosian asked.

  “It’s already started, and paying dividends. Look, I gotta bounce now, I’ll hit you up on Monday after my meeting.”

  “That’s going to be difficult.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “After that lunch we had, where I almost lost my phone, I’ve decided to just stick to burners.”

  “Ain’t that gonna ‘cramp your style’?”

  Petrosian laughed at Casey’s joke. “You let me worry about that—I’ll figure out how to touch base with you. We can discuss more about the affiliation on Monday, as well as this other gig.” Casey shrugged at this and was about to walk when Petrosian continued. “Look, I don’t go offering cats I don’t know that well to come in on jobs with me, so I hope that would mean something to you, right?”

  Casey saw that Petrosian son’s game was breaking up, and he didn’t really want to be there when his kid came over. “I get what you’re sayin’. But the bottom line for me is that I’m gonna need some kind of inclination this week fo sho, but right now I gotta dip.”

  Petrosian stood up and shook Casey’s hand and said, “Agreed.”

  * * *

  Casey reflected on his meeting with Petrosian as he drove back to the Urban Victory office. He’d planned to tap the Armenian’s phone, but that now looked like it was out of the question. ’Sides, whenever he was around him, the guy always talked in Armenian to his crew, which would have meant getting translation software. That tech was great for reading an article but mediocre at best for long chunks of conversations filled with slang. That coupled with the fact that Petrosian’s crew would always be flipping burners meant it would involve way too much manpower.

  He wondered what the gig was; if it involved dope, that’d be a nonstarter for him. Ten minutes from the office, it started to rain hard. People quickly ran inside to escape getting wet as the fat drops pelted the ground. The way they reacted reminded him of how the people at the restaurant had scattered for cover when the bullets started flying. If only Petrosian had been killed at the restaurant, then all this shit would be over by now. Course, if he was gonna be dead, I’d probably be tits up next to him right now. He knew second-guessing that decision would get him nowhere, so he tossed it aside as he pulled in to the garage.

  Shin was anxiously waiting for him up in the office; Casey could tell he had news. “Where’s Champa at?” he asked as he waved his boy into the back.

  Shin held his tongue until they were in Casey’s secure office. “He said he’d be here in ten minutes. Crush, I tagged Fordham this afternoon.”

  “Dope! My man! How’d you swing that?”

  “Jacob picked up a conversation from one of the detectives talkin’ about meeting with him for lunch, so I staked out the spot and tagged his ass.”

  “Cool, very cool—”

  “That’s not all, Crush.… They dropped your name.”

  Casey sat down behind his desk and pondered this. He’d thought he was off their radar, but it looked like that was obviously not the case. “Run it down. Every last detail.”

  “Fordham met two of his senior detectives for lunch in Chinatown earlier this afternoon. They discussed a few different cases, one being Mick’s failed drug bust, another the Petrosian shooting, and the last, Rono’s murder. I went ahead and had Jacob edit down the conversation to keep only the parts I knew you’d be interested in. He’s waiting on your call right now.”

  Casey flipped open his computer and reached out for a
video chat with Jacob. The hacker’s face popped up on the screen. Casey got straight to it.

  “Play it.”

  Jacob typed on his keyboard, and then there was the sound of three men talking over Casey’s speakers.

  “—So, how exactly did the Micky Benzo bust get fucked up?” Fordham asked.

  On the screen was also a transcript denoting who was saying what. The two detectives tried to double-talk him with excuses, but Fordham shut them down immediately.

  “—For fuck’s sakes, are you two serious with this bullshit! I thought I was working with detectives, not a bunch of fuckin’ clowns. This was an easy one, handed to you on a goddamn platter, and you and your team blew it! You bet everything on a junkie, for chrissakes! What’d you think would happen?”

  The two detectives were silent while Fordham muttered about the bullshit he had to put up with under his breath and ordered lunch from the waitress.

  “Now, what about Crush Casey? What’s he up to nowadays? I still can’t believe you couldn’t pop him on the Rono murder.”

  “Captain, there were no witnesses and no physical evidence. By the time we got there, it was a done deal, Rono was DOA, and if Casey was ever at the scene, he was long gone. We’re still sniffing around, but so far nothing is coming up. If anybody on the streets knows anything, they aren’t talkin’. You know Lomax is his PO, right?”

  “No, I didn’t, and why the fuck am I hearing this for the first time now?” Fordham was clearly agitated by this news.

  “We didn’t think it was a big deal, Cap—’sides, that beef with him was fifteen years ago.”

  “Not a big deal? Jesus Christ, this is why I do the thinking round here, and you guys just follow fucking orders—if you can even do that. Do you think he forgot about how we framed his ass with twenty-five large in his trunk? Christ, the only reason he still has a career is because Internal Affairs didn’t have the balls to cut him loose. Which, incidentally, they would have if you two had listened to me and put a couple keys of coke in his trunk like I told you to. There’s always plenty of ways to get that shit back out of the evidence locker once he’d been tossed off the force.”

  Casey couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Lomax was set up by his partner and two other detectives! Finally, he had some leverage with his PO. He didn’t know how he was gonna use it, but rest assured, he knew he would.

  “The last thing I want is to be anywhere near that guy, or to have him come nosing around our business,” Fordham said. “He’s in Parole, let him fuckin’ die there.”

  The other detectives agreed, and in the background Casey could hear the waitress ask if they wanted anything else. When she left, they continued with their business.

  “Back to Crush Casey—do you want us to put a guy on him?” one of the detectives asked.

  “No, not now, maybe later. We can’t spare the manpower, and what’s it gonna get us right now anyway? That motherfucker knows how to keep his nose looking clean, at least.”

  “Okay, what about Petrosian?”

  “You two keep a close eye on him yourselves—I don’t want the other detectives around him. If we play our cards right, we’ll be able to cash in when he moves his next load of heroin.”

  Casey pressed his fingers together and stared off into space for a moment; then he turned and looked at Jacob, contemplating the fabric of the plan he was gonna unleash on Fordham. This cat has ruined too many lives to count. Casey knew he would take him out; he just hadn’t figured out all the details yet.

  Casey’s phone buzzed that Champa had arrived, and Shin let him in. He had Jacob play the audio back so he could be up to date on everything.

  “Damn, we got a lot of balls in the air,” Champa said.

  “Yeah, but only because we got more intel. In the past, we woulda been blissfully unaware of what was up until shit happened. Time was, that woulda meant Mick Benzo’d be staring down a life sentence. Now we know everything that’s gonna happen before it happens and can react accordingly. It’s more work, but it keeps us ahead of the game.”

  Shinzo and Champa both nodded as Casey kept talking.

  “I’m already seeing us expand this even further, into areas where there’s a lot less risk and a whole shitload more paper to be made. No more hittin’ licks in the street, just sittin’ behind a computer, makin’ loot.”

  “So, what’s that look like?” Shin asked.

  “It looks like Wall Street, brotha. That’s where the real paper is, and where the right information at the right time can make you Warren Buffett money. All those corporate cats are criminals in three-piece suits—trust me on that. Part of their game’s knowing they gonna get busted eventually, but makin’ enough money off their shit that it don’t matter. Very rarely do you see a big executive get put behind bars unless the level of fraud is massive.”

  “Hell, yeah, look at the mortgage meltdown. Hundreds of billions lost, and not one CEO indicted for it,” Shin said.

  Casey nodded. “That’s right, now you feelin’ me. Or take the drug companies, for instance. They release a new drug and it’s on the market for years, it fucks people up and they get busted for that and they know that shit is bad but they sellin’ it anyway and what happens? They pay a fine of five hundred million! Meanwhile, the drug’s already made ’em three billion profit even after R and D costs, and the payoff’s covered by their insurance.”

  “Like that shit that Erin Brockovich broad uncovered,” Champa said.

  “Exactly. Those are the cats I wanna target. If we play it right, we’ll be caked out and the only thing that’ll get us crossed up is if we get greedy and take unnecessary risks.”

  “Yeah, but how we gonna get close to cats like that?” Shin asked.

  “That’s the easy part. Regardless of how loaded these guys are, they can never resist a fine bitch. That’s the army we need to start recruiting for.”

  “That’ll be my job,” Champa said, cracking him and everyone else up.

  “Speakin’ of jobs, don’t we got a car heist to plan?” Casey said as he took his feet off his desk.

  Champa stood up and said, “Indeed, my brotha. You got time tomorrow for me to walk you through it step by step? It’ll mean takin’ a little road trip.”

  “Hell yeah, how long’s it gonna take?”

  “Four or five hours tops.”

  “Okay, let’s all meet here at ten A.M. sharp.”

  With that, the guys all went their separate ways. On his way home, Casey thought about how impressed he was at the way things were lining up. He’d assembled a crew that was head and shoulders above everyone out there.

  He still felt cautious, though, because there were a lot more moving pieces on a much larger board than he was used to. He was also putting a lot of trust in Al P. and Jacob. Those guys hadn’t been battle-tested, so the first sign of heat would be a true indication of just how down they really were. It was a gamble, but one that he felt he had to take. And then there was the unknown, the chaos that invariably got tossed into life when things seemed to be rolling along perfectly. Casey was patiently waiting for that other shoe to drop.

  15

  The next morning, Casey reached out to the guys at the last minute and switched the meeting place from the office to Kimchi’s Korean Deli. He’d had enough of routine in the joint and didn’t want to stay in old habits on the outside. Plus, it would confuse anyone who still might be keepin’ tabs on him and his crew.

  The guys all rolled up about the same time and walked into the deli and went straight to the back room.

  “Okay, Champa, run it down,” Casey said.

  Champa took off his jacket, tossed it aside, and pulled a map out of the back pocket of his jeans and unfolded it. Written in red at various places were the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4.

  “Here’s how we gonna do it. Number one’s the pier, number two’s where we hijack the trucks, number three’s where we drive the trucks to and stash the cars, and number four’s where we dump the trucks. I got my b
oy at Port Authority who is gonna tell me twelve hours before the cars arrive; right now they are scheduled for next Thursday, but he’s gonna confirm that. The stash spot is a warehouse in Brooklyn and will take about five to ten minutes to get there. Once we hijack the trucks, we’ll need to hook the trailers up to our trucks. It’s too risky to roll with their trucks, ’cause they got tracking devices that enable the company to pinpoint exactly where we are. The transports will all take different routes. Although the original destination for these cars was the Hamptons, we should assume that they’ll be missed soon after we jack them. Once we unload the cars, we’ll need to dump the trailers.”

  Casey sat and listened until Champa was done running the plan down and started to run down questions.

  “So, if I understand this right, the plan is to jack these trucks around seven A.M. as they pass through Brooklyn on the Belt Parkway, pull ’em over, switch trailers, and then drive them through Brooklyn, unload ’em, and stash the trucks at a different location.”

  When Champa heard the plan back, Casey could tell by his expression that he realized it still needed some work. Casey knew he’d been working hard on it and didn’t want to burst his bubble by poking holes, but the fact was, it needed a lot of work if it was gonna work at all.

  “Okay, we gonna build on your plan to make sure we don’t take any unnecessary chances. For example, when we jump these trucks, the drivers may have time to radio for help. If they do, we are fucked. Also, the time it will take to park and switch trailers on two trucks is gonna take longer than we have. So what I propose is you find out which trucking company is being used; then we need to find someone on the inside or hack into their computers to see what trucks are assigned to do the pickup. Once we do that, we’ll need to rig a device that will knock out their communication and tracking systems. The other issue we have is the drivers’ cell phones. We gonna need to figure how to knock those out as well.”

  Champa listened to everything Casey said, agreed with it, and said he’d talk to Al P. about the communication problems. Afterwards, they got into Shin’s G-Wagen and hit the streets to check out the different locations. The last one was the warehouse in Brooklyn. It was on Alabama Avenue, an industrial street that didn’t seem to have a lot of traffic. The buildings around it were also warehouses. It was perfect, at least from the outside. Inside was five thousand square feet of nothing and glazed windows so prying eyes couldn’t see inside. Champa said the owner was willing to do a cash deal, no questions asked. Satisfied, the guys jumped back in Shin’s whip and headed back to Kimchi’s to pick up their cars.