by Ice-T
Lomax’s face twisted up like he’d eaten something sour as Casey got up to leave. “What the fuck are you talking about? What’d you do now?”
“I know you were sweatin’ someone pretty hard with your PO shit, and they got tired of it and tried to off you.”
Lomax’s eyes narrowed for a moment until the lightbulb in his head went off. “Vladik Hekimyan?”
Casey didn’t want to confirm or deny his guess, at least not until they both had an understanding.
“You see, when you play someone close like that, and you disrupt their business, you have to assume that they will react.”
“Sonofabitch. Do you know this for a fact?”
“Are you saying it don’t add up?” Casey looked at him incredulously.
“Close the door.”
Casey closed the door and sat back down.
“So what makes you think he actually did this, and what else do you—?”
“Hold on, Lomax, we need to get some things straight before we go down this road. Are you ready to cut the pretense shit and be straight with me?”
Lomax folded his thick arms across his chest and nodded. “Okay, no bullshit. What do you wanna know?” he asked.
“Where’s my jewelry, my Saint Jude?”
“Ahh, so that’s what this’s about? You afraid it’s going to get into the wrong hands or something? It’s safe in my filing cabinet, so you can relax about that.”
“When do I get it back?”
“Why? You feel like you need the powers of your Saint Jude’s medal?”
“Is this the way it’s gonna go?”
“Like I said, relax—you’ll get it when I return. Is that what this was all about?”
“The crew in the van, that tried take out Petrosian at the Davilla, who were they, and are there more like them?”
“Who they were doesn’t matter, and no, that was it—except for you, of course.”
“What do you know about Vladik?”
“He’s Petrosian’s right-hand guy. He just finished a six-year sentence for a Class C Felony.”
“What’d he do?”
“Sex with a minor. The girl was seventeen and from the Eastern Bloc, undoubtedly she worked for Petrosian. The judge gave him the max because the other charges didn’t have strong enough evidence.”
“You got any idea how big of a crew Petrosian’s got?”
“Including himself and Vladik, maybe a total of eight guys. He’s got a lot of contacts sprinkled throughout Armenia, Russia, and Czechoslovakia that he gets the girls and dope from.”
“Is he part of a bigger syndicate?”
“It’s hard to say—I don’t have the same access as I used to have. Any information I’ve gotten has come in bits and pieces. But regardless, when you’re in that part of the world, there’s so much corruption, it’s impossible to get solid intel. Are you worried about retribution?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘worried,’ I just want to know what the whole story is. Why do you think he hasn’t been busted yet?”
“I think he has someone on the inside keeping him one step ahead of everything.”
“Any ideas?”
“My old partner and now the chief detective, John Fordham.”
“And what do you know that supports that?”
“Because there was every reason to hold him after the shooting went down. His car was right in front of the restaurant, and two of his guys were dead. Fordham’s office did little to nothing to investigate that incident.”
“So maybe he’s lazy?”
“Not a chance, he likes everyone to know who’s boss. That means he puts you away or you work for him. I can’t prove he’s connected to Petrosian, but it adds up.”
“So is your primary motivation Petrosian or Fordham?”
“Both!”
“Uh-huh. So why have you been feeding me info? Don’t you have faith in the system?”
Lomax’s face grew redder as he talked. “You mean the system that couldn’t see someone was trying to frame me when I got busted down to being a parole officer? The way I see it there’s the law and there’s your own moral law, and sometimes those two don’t match up.”
Casey shook his head and laughed when he heard this. If he only knew what was in store for Fordham and his partners, he woulda sprang his fat ass out of that bed and done cartwheels.
“Damn, Lomax, you kinda sound like a criminal, you know that?”
“Look, when I was active, I bent the rules here and there, but I didn’t break them, and look what it got me. I’m just fighting fire with fire here.”
“I can dig that. But look, from here on out, this arrangement needs another level of transparency. Up to now, I’ve been the only one with something to lose, and as a result, that has put me in a situation I don’t like. No more of the cryptic talk and clues. And I ain’t ‘working’ for you. If you want me to do something, it’s my decision.”
“Okay, well, right now, you know what I know. And when I get back on my desk, which should be in about a week, that’s the way it’ll stay.”
Casey didn’t trust Lomax, so he didn’t really invest too much in those words. The way things were heating up, Casey could be dead in a week. He was glad this shit was out in the open with Lomax and that his conversation hadn’t set off a power struggle between them. Having someone on the inside would be an asset, but he knew Lomax would never be a friend and that their relationship would be tenuous most times. After all, he was still a cop. There was a light knock at the door, and a nurse stepped in to check on his vitals and to let him know lunch was gonna be served.
Casey took that as his cue to leave. “All right, I’m out of here.”
“Hold on, Mr. Casey, how about telling me what the hell’s going on?”
“All I can say is to keep an eye on your TV for the next couple days—if all goes well, it will all be very entertaining and gratifying.”
“So much for transparency.”
With a shrug, Casey let that slide and left the room. As he walked down the antiseptic hallway to the elevator, he dialed Webster to meet him in front. As things stood, Lomax was gonna be in Casey’s life for close to the next three years. The only way that would change was if he put him up for review for discharge consideration. He wasn’t gonna hold his breath for that, but once he put Fordham on blast, well, who knows what could happen?
Webster rolled up in front of the hospital, and Casey got in the backseat. He checked his phone to get a locale on the detectives that were following him. They were still in front of his office building, clueless that he was miles from there. He sent a text to Champa to make sure the crew used the back entrance to the building to make sure they wouldn’t be spotted.
Back in his office, Casey prepared for the meeting and ran down the plan with Champa and Shin. The key was to keep Petrosian near Casey and his two guys near Shin and Champa. The less his crew had to deal with them, the better.
“Okay, instead of the Garcia boys running shotgun on these trucks, you guys’ll do that. As far as Petrosian’s guys go, I’ll figure out how they fit in later. The other details all remain the same.”
Casey looked up at the screen and saw some of the guys coming in. He sent Champa out to greet them and take them into the conference room while Shin hung back at Casey’s request.
“Have a seat, brotha. I need to talk to you about something.”
Shin sank into the leather sofa, and Casey took a seat opposite him. Shin had shown his stuff in a lot of ways, and Casey knew that if he kept following his lead, his future could be big.
“You been doing a good job out there, and you haven’t been a headache.”
“Thanks, Crush. I gotta say, watchin’ you pull this together has been mind-blowing. Seein’ the way you handle Al P. and Jacob, then gettin’ all the big bosses to jump on board, man, this shit’s incredible. I appreciate you rollin’ the dice on a brotha.”
“Cool, well, keep watchin’ and learnin’. You’re earnin’ a good
rep and stripes out there. Eventually you could be runnin’ this whole thing one day.”
“Fo sho, boss. I wanna learn as much as I can. I know there’s a lotta pitfalls, and that shit can go left at the drop of a dime. I see how you’re always looking for cracks in everything, and I do the same in my own way.”
Casey looked at the monitor and saw that everyone was at the meeting and knew he had to wrap things up. “Okay, so this is a pop quiz for you. Knowin’ what you know about this job, assume you’re me and try and guess what I’ma break you off for this heist.”
Shin didn’t hesitate to answer, and Casey wasn’t surprised. In his head, he had probably calculated what he hoped he would get a thousand times. “Two-fifty would be fair.”
“Champa thinks different. He thinks you should get three hundred.”
“That’s tight, I appreciate it, man. You know I ain’t gonna let you guys down.”
“I know you ain’t, Shin. Okay, let’s roll into this meeting.”
Casey walked into the crowded room, followed by Shin. He sat at the head of the mahogany table and kept quiet as he looked around at the men seated before him. He had known all these guys for at least thirty years. All were powerful men in their own right. All had experienced great triumph and great loss.
“I gotta lot to say, and I’ve put a lot of thought into it. I’m gonna lay it all out, and then take your questions. The job I’ve lined up takes place this Thursday at seven A.M. near the Port Authority shipyard in Jersey. It’s the heist of twelve sports cars being imported from Italy. Most of them are one-of-a-kind. I have a buyer lined up, and I have a fifty percent deposit. If for some reason he does not pay on time, we keep the deposit and sell the cars to someone else. Once we jack the cars, we’ll take ’em to a warehouse, where they’ll be stored; after that the trucks and trailers will be ditched. The whole job will take less than four hours. I’ve got each one of you assigned to certain parts of this job that I’m gonna run through. Now, there is another cat on the job with two of his men. His name is Alek Petrosian. I will get into that later.”
The guys exchanged looks with each other but kept quiet as Casey laid out his plan. This was not the first time any of them had rolled with Casey. His reputation was that he planned out everything to a T and would not tolerate anyone deviating from the plan unless he said it was okay.
Casey looked at Sean E Sean and started with him. “Sean, I need four detective badges with photo IDs. I’ll give you the photos before you leave. I also need four Nissan Altimas with detective’s lights.”
“The badges and lights are easy, the cars are the trickier part. Do they all need to be the same color?”
“That’d be best, but if they’re not, we can deal with that. Can you get those wheels on such short notice?”
“Yeah, I know how to make that happen.”
Casey then turned his attention to the room and started laying out the whole plan in detail. The guys would all meet at 5 A.M. sharp at Urban Victory; from there they would head out in the stolen cars to a spot a couple miles past the shipyard and lie in wait for the trucks carrying the cars. They would pull the trucks over with their lights flashing, take the guys out of each truck, and tie them up in the backseat of one of the cars. Then the team would swarm the transports and disable the GPS systems on the cars and the trucks. Once that was handled, the trucks would be driven to a warehouse, unloaded, and the transports would be driven to different locations and dumped. Casey would have Shin, Mick, and the Garcia brothers hold down the warehouse until the cars were picked up. Once that handoff was made and the loot was collected, everyone would meet up at Urban Victory to collect their cut. Casey knew there were questions waiting to be asked, so he opened up the floor.
Mick got into it first. “What are we getting paid?”
“Each crew gets a million bucks when the final deal is made.”
As expected, the whole crew reacted to this in a positive way.
Once the talk about the loot died down, Hen Gee caught Casey’s eye.
“Yeah, Hen, what’s your question?”
“A few things, this sounds tight and a helluva payday for a short amount of work, so we’re appreciative of that. My questions are: How do we knock out the GPS? How do we stop the drivers from alerting dispatch or the cops that they’ve been pulled over, and finally, can you be more specific about the kind of cars?”
“All good questions. There are a dozen cars in total. Most of them you all’d be hip to, but there are some that are ultra-high-end and rare, like the Koenigsegg Trevita and CCXR, the Pagani Zonda Cinque Roadster, and my favorite, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.”
There was a chorus of ohhs and ahhhs as he ran down the complete list. Casey watched all the guys, and knew more than one of them would be tempted to take a couple out for a test drive before they gave ’em up.
“As for stoppin’ the drivers from droppin’ a dime, we do that by jacking their phones and knocking them out remotely. I already got a man on that. As for killing the GPS, I’ll let Champa take that one.”
Champa stood up and put a twelve-by-twelve box on the table. He reached inside and pulled out what looked like a phone charger with an antenna on it and held it up. “This little gadget is called GPS Tracker Defense. It plugs into the cigarette lighter, has a fifteen-foot-radius, and will knock out the GPS system of any car. When we pull over the trucks, we’ll put these on board, then go to the other cars and install them. I got the manifest for all the cars, and all the lighters work without the keys in the ignition. As an extra precaution, once we get to the warehouse, we will take out the GPS fuses to make sure we don’t get tracked.”
The room was clearly impressed as Champa started tossing the units to everyone in the room for inspection. Champa told the guys that he’d had all the units tested to make sure they worked, and they all checked out. Sean raised his hand and said, “Do you got four extra so I can put ’em in the four cars I’m boostin’?”
“Yeah, I got you on that. I also can show you where the GPS fuse’ll be on those cars, too.”
“This looks flawless, as always, Case. One thing, though … Who’s this Petrosian guy? He’s the same cat that’s got the rep for sellin’ H, right?” Hen Gee asked as he handed the GPS blocker to his brother to inspect.
“Yeah, it’s the same dude. I been havin’ conversations with him on some other business, and during those talks, he asked me to do this heist with him. Rather than walking away from this job or starting a war, I decided to give him a piece.”
“I don’t know ’bout everyone else,” Sean said as he leaned forward in his chair, “but working with a dude I don’t know who’s got his kind of pedigree makes me a bit uneasy, Case.”
“I agree. This all came down real quick, and that’s the way the cards were dealt.” Casey saw Mick was about to speak, and knew exactly what he was gonna say. He cut him off before he could say it. “Takin’ him out ain’t an option, ’cause his people know me and about the job. If that went down, there’d be retribution against me for sure. None of us need that kind of heat.”
Casey felt the tension rise in the room. These guys didn’t like newcomers, and he couldn’t blame them. Most people had a level of discomfort that stopped them from moving forward at certain times in their life. Every time he’d encountered this, Casey had always pushed past that feeling; he had felt like this whole thing was fate. If he hadn’t reached out to Petrosian, they would have surely met when the cars were stolen, and then what? There was something about this whole thing that felt like someone’s master plan.
Mack D used to say he never believed in fate or God, for that matter. He often quoted G. K. Chesterton, saying, “I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.” This was where he and Mack diverged. Casey argued that when he looked at his life, it had a consistent order that seemed to be too perfect to be random, as if it were preordained or written. Things that seemed like coinc
idence or accidents that he thought were of no relevance ended up having a massive effect on his life. And though he was an individual, it seemed like he was an instrument in a band that created a collective work that made sense out of what seemed like chaos.
“Fuck it, I’m down to roll with you on this, Crush. Shit, I’d be in the joint right now or dead if it hadn’t been for you,” Mick said.
“I second that,” Sean said.
Casey looked at Hen and Big E as the brothers stared at each other. He knew Hen was down, but wouldn’t move forward unless his brother was up for it. Those guys always acted as one, and today would be no different. If they didn’t agree, it would set a bad precedent, and Casey’s alliance might be dead before it really got off the ground. Big E looked at Casey and said, “So you trust that this Petrosian cat won’t go left on us?”
Now was not the time for anything but the absolute truth. Casey stared back at Big E and gave it. “Nope.”
Big E laughed and held up his hands. “Okay, fam, I’m down. Let’s play this out.”
With that, the guys went their separate ways. Big E hung back for a sec. He pulled Casey aside and asked, “You know you my dawg, right?”
“Shit, man, I get it. I respect that you got to do your due diligence.”
“Okay, fam, we’re in. Let’s make this paper.”
After the guys left, Casey met with Shin and Champa in his private office. Champa told him that he’d spoken to Rich that morning and clued him in on everything. The only thing left was to drop a dime on all the detectives. Casey was concerned about waiting too long or springing his surprise too soon. He needed Fordham and his guys incapacitated while the deal went down; otherwise, he was sure there’d be problems. He opened up his computer and initiated a video chat with Jacob. When his face popped up, Casey could tell there was something wrong with him.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you, dude?”
“Man, I just started feeling like shit after lunch. I think I’m getting the flu.”
“Are you sure it’s not food poisoning? Please tell me you didn’t order from that Jamaican restaurant downstairs?”