by James Tarr
The clock above the sink ticked loudly with every advance of the second hand. The refrigerator hummed and vibrated slightly in his hand, which was still on the handle. Shit. He had all sorts of time to do whatever he wanted, he just didn’t feel like doing anything. Didn’t feel like working out, or practicing his draw, really didn’t feel like mowing the lawn. He was glad Gina was working, because he didn’t feel like company, either.
He headed upstairs with the vague idea of changing his clothes. The house was a hair over 2400 square feet, which was far bigger than he needed. Honestly, it was larger than his parents had needed, but they’d bought the house when they had plans to start a family.
Dave had actually had a brother, an older brother who’d died of meningitis when Dave was only a few months old. He of course had no memories of Robby, and his parents never talked about him. Once he got old enough he knew not to ask. Occasionally he wondered how that had changed them as people, and as parents. Losing a child, especially a two-year-old, to some random disease, had to have been devastating for them. He wondered how his life was different because of the death of his brother. Dave hadn’t been an only child, and yet he had. Were his parents easier on him because he was all they had, or all they had left? He’d asked them once why he didn’t have any other brothers and sisters, and his mother had just replied, “I guess because God wants it that way.” Which, he supposed, meant they’d tried, but it had never happened. And so the house had always seemed a bit big and empty.
In addition to the master bedroom, there were three bedrooms on the second floor. The master bedroom had its own bathroom, and walk-in closet, but the other bedrooms shared a bathroom off the stairway. His engineer father had turned one of the bedrooms into his home office, and his mother had claimed another as her sewing room. Dave had boxed their stuff up and put in the basement, but that was it. He knew, someday, he’d have to do something with it, but he hadn’t gotten there yet, even though it had been years.
The master bedroom was huge, with windows on three sides. While he’d left the furniture in the rest of the house alone, he just couldn’t sleep in his parents’ bed. He’d replaced it with an expensive king-sized mattress and new wrought iron bed frame. The house was so quiet that he could hear the birds chirping outside even with the windows closed. Sunlight was slanting in through the back window, and dust particles sparkled in the golden light.
He walked to the dresser beside the bed, a chest-high dark brown walnut piece probably older than he was. With a sigh he pried his shoes off and kicked them under the dresser. As he did that, his eye was caught by a photo. The frame was dusty, and he realized he probably hadn’t cleaned it off since the house had become his. Hell, he hadn’t looked at it in years, even though it was right there. The photo was of his parents standing side by side in the sun—in the back yard, actually—his mother’s hand on top of Dave’s head. How old was he there, four, five? His parents looked so much younger in the photo than he remembered them. Happy, even though their dream of a big family hadn’t worked out.
Dave sat down on the bed, photo in his hands, and burst into tears.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
John had a rule—and it was a good rule—that you didn’t shit where you ate. Doing surveillance on someone anywhere near your own house was a very bad idea. If they spotted you, spotted your vehicle, and you lived four cities over, that was one thing, but if you lived two blocks over, that could cause some serious problems. Which was why he hadn’t even considered giving Dave the domestic surveillance right around the corner from his house, in the same subdivision, even though it was supposed to be a cake walk. The wife was heading out of town Friday morning, and she wanted her husband followed from work on Friday. She thought he had a girlfriend, and figured her long-arranged trip out of town would be a perfect opportunity for him to misbehave, if that’s what he was actually up to.
The wife had given John a description of her husband’s vehicle, including the plate, the address where he worked, the names and addresses of the guys who were his closest friends, everything he might need to know and then some. If her husband went straight home after work, she wanted John to sit on him until eleven o’clock, then he could break off, because her husband never stayed up past eleven.
“And Saturday?” John had asked her.
“Oh no, if he does anything, it will be on Friday night,” she told him.
“But you’re not coming back until Sunday afternoon, right?”
“Yes?”
“It just seems to me he could just as easily do something on Saturday as Friday. Maybe more likely, as he doesn’t have to work.”
“Do you give a discount for working on the weekend?” she asked him.
“Uh, no, sorry.”
“Then just Friday.”
So that was how John had found himself doing a surveillance roughly three hundred yards, as the crow flew, from Dave’s house on a Friday night. To add insult to injury, Dave went jogging by about eight o’clock, and gave a little wave as he passed John’s SUV. Fucker.
Before Dave was back from his run, John left him a voicemail on his cell phone. “Yeah, ha ha, enjoy your run. Listen, I don’t think this guy’s going anywhere tonight, and we’re wasting the client’s money. I really think he’s more likely to do something tomorrow. Even though she’s too cheap to pay for it, I want to sit on this guy tomorrow for a few hours, but I’ve got something to do tomorrow morning. Can you sit on him until about nine? Maybe start at seven? Give me a call, let me know.”
Dave listened to the message when he got back, and called John. “He still there?”
“I can see the TV. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Girlfriend could stop by.”
“Yeah. Can you sit on this for a couple hours tomorrow? I know it’s a little close to home.”
The only plans Dave had for Saturday were to head over to the range and get some practice time in with the rifle. Considering the range didn’t open until nine a.m. anyway…. “Yeah, sure, not a problem.”
“All right. I’ll email you his info. Right now he’s parked in the attached garage, the only car in there, and there’s nothing else in his driveway or parked anywhere near the house. You show up and there’s anything parked nearby, get the plate. Make sure to call into the Troy P.D., otherwise they’ll roll on you. And I’ll be back at nine.”
“You know, this isn’t…..” Wilson began, turned in the driver’s seat of his Charger.
“Even if you’re just gonna take a look at him we should be there,” Parker said from the front passenger seat. “I don’t trust the feds for shit.” He looked to Gabe in the back for agreement.
“This whole thing is fucked,” Gabe said. He was looking decidedly depressed.
“We’re fucked,” Wilson said. “Even if this is a clear way out, not knowing why they want this kid done really bothers me. We don’t know what we’re getting into.” In his heart he still hadn’t decided whether or not he could go through with it. If everything Hartman had told him was true, then it was a way out, but that was a real big fucking if.
He hadn’t told any of his crew about the digital recording he had of his meeting with Hartman. That was his insurance. The only person he’d said anything to was his wife. And with her he’d only hinted that he had something that might help. He could always offer the recording to the FBI, in hopes the trade of a dirty agent would make them go easier on him, allow him to plea to a much lesser charge, but what about Gabe, Eddie, and Parker? No way the FBI would go easy on all of them. “Where is Eddie? Wasn’t he going to be here?”
Wilson looked around the parking deck of the MGM Casino. He’d pulled the FBI’s GPS tracker off his car—because he could, fuck ‘em—and he’d told everybody else to meet him there, but to make sure they slipped their tails and didn’t take their own rides. If the FBI still had them all under surveillance—and that was a good bet—they wouldn’t be expecting them to be out this early on a Saturday. Only Parker had seen any hi
nt of a tail car when he’d left his house, and he’d lost them pretty quickly—FBI didn’t know how to follow shit unless they had eight cars, a helicopter, and a GPS tracker in the wheel well. The parking deck was remarkably full of cars, and Wilson idly wondered if they belonged to people who’d arrived early to gamble, or had just never gone home.
“I talked to him last night,” Parker told him. “I gave him what info you had, and he was going to try and run the kid, see if he had a record.”
“With who?”
“I don’t know, but you know Roo, he knows a lot of people. I told him nothing official, nothing that could be traced back to him. But I didn’t hear back, and he knew you wanted to meet this morning.”
“We might as well do a drive-by,” Gabe said from the back seat. “Got nothing else to do. What am I going to do, go home and sit around listening to the FBI listening to my ass?”
The flash drive Hartman had given Wilson had been full of information on the kid they wanted gone. In fact, there was almost too much info on it. It worried him. Where’d they get all the info? From who? Kid’s work history, medical history, vehicles, photo, everything. Satellite photo of his house, so at least Wilson didn’t have to worry about that. Punching an address into his home computer….at this point he assumed everything he did online was being monitored by the feds. There it was, that twinge in his gut again. Was it an ulcer? Wouldn’t surprise him, all the stress he’d been under. Worst fucking month of his life.
He was carrying his Glock. He’d be damned if he’d roll around unarmed in this city, he’d put too many assholes behind bars. The department had pulled his badge, and his issue Glock, but he had his own spare Glock .40 and a Concealed Pistol License. The FBI hadn’t found it when they’d searched his house, and he wasn’t about to turn it over. Until he got convicted of a felony, he was still legal.
“Fuck it, let’s at least check out the house. Maybe he’s got a ‘I Want To Kill the President’ sign on his front lawn, swastikas in the windows. Nobody’s got their phones, right? I don’t want the feds tracking us.”
“I’ve got a dump phone,” Parker said. “Never been used. Eddie has the number. Maybe he’ll call while we’re out.”
“I ain’t holding my breath on that coke-head,” Gabe grumbled.
Parker turned around to look at him as Wilson backed out of the parking space and headed toward the exit.
“Roo’s got his issues, but he’s fucking solid,” Parker said angrily. “I’m not worried about him turning rat. He’s the only one of us fucking fought when they knocked on the door.”
“What are you trying to say?” Gabe said. “I haven’t said shit.”
In fact, through a concerted effort organized by Parker, enough money and collateral had been raised or donated by fellow DPD officers to get Gabe out on bail. They’d been worried that sitting in jail was wearing down his resistance, and wanted to get him away from the FBI agents who kept trying to get him to talk.
“Chill, both of you,” Wilson told them. “Let’s just get an eye on this kid’s house, and see what’s up.”
“Shit’s early, he’s still going to be in bed,” Gabe said from the back, ducking his head so he could see the house through the windshield.
The house was unremarkable. Two stories, aluminum siding, attached two car garage. It looked a hell of a lot like every other house on the street. The garage was closed, and they couldn’t see any lights on inside, although it was almost fully light out. There were curtains or drapes across the big front window, and what looked like blinds covering the upstairs windows. They sat and watched the house silently. There was no movement in the neighborhood, although the street echoed with the early morning calls of birds. There’d been a sign entering the neighborhood—Stoneridge. He assumed that was the name of the neighborhood, or subdivision.
“I’m glad it’s early. This neighborhood’s a little pale for us.”
Wilson grunted in assent, but then said, “My car fits in fine.” His black Charger R/T was less than two years old, and didn’t have a scratch on it yet.
“How long you want to sit here? You want to bang on the neighbors’ doors, ask if they know if little Johnny’s been up to no good?”
Wilson sighed. He didn’t have an answer for that. He’d hoped that seeing the kid’s house might help him, but it was just a house. And they couldn’t sit there all day. Any minute now some coffee-sipping busybody was sure to peer out her curtains and see a car full of negroes parked on the street, call 911, and then they were fucked if they ever did decide to kill the kid. First thing the detectives would do is check all the reports and dispatch calls in the neighborhood, to see if there’d been anything suspicious noted prior to the murder. Three grown black men loitering in a car down the block from his house would definitely qualify as suspicious.
“All right,” Wilson said, staring the car. The engine turned over with a deep rumble. Gotta love the hemi. “That didn’t do shit for us.”
“Hold up, garage door’s going up,” Gabe said.
“Early,” Parker said. “Date heading home early, you think? Walk of shame?”
As the garage door opened all the way, they saw brake lights flare in the dim garage, then white reverse lights. They couldn’t quite ID the car until it was halfway out of the garage.
Parker whistled. “Nice ride. That his car?” The Mustang looked new or close to it, and had obviously been treated to a few aftermarket parts. A black GT, it sported oversize tires and wheels, and the low growl of its exhaust could be heard all the way down the block, over the sound of their own car.
“They both are. His house too.” Wilson could see the other vehicle in the garage was a Cherokee.
“How old is he? Twenty-five? He’s got some money. Maybe he’s into drugs. What you gonna do?”
“Shit,” Wilson said. The Mustang waited for the garage door to close, and he could see the driver, a white male who looked like the photo he’d seen of the kid, was alone in the car. The Mustang then headed away from them on the street. On an impulse, Wilson put the Charger into gear and headed after him. Just then Parker’s pre-paid cell rang.
“Yeah? Roo, whatchoo doing, where are you? No, we were sitting at his house, but he just got into his ride, the Mustang. Top’s doing a loose tail through the hood right now. You find anything?”
Wilson looked at his partner. Parker shook his head. Shit. “Where is he?” he asked Parker.
“On I-75. Heading this way.”
“No,” Wilson said firmly. “We don’t need any more exposure out here. Tell him to stay there, after we break off here we’ll hook up with him and have a sit down.”
“You catch that?” Parker said into the phone. “No, shit, Roo—” he pulled the phone away from his head and looked at it.
“What?”
Parker shook his head. “I don’t think he ever went to sleep last night, he wasn’t even listening to me. Mouth going a mile a minute.” He looked out the windshield. Wilson turned a corner in the subdivision and saw the Mustang up ahead. “Where the fuck are we—watch out, he’s pulling over. Shit, did he see us?”
Wilson quickly pulled the Charger to the curb about a hundred feet behind the Mustang. There were two parked cars between their vehicles. “I don’t think so, that was the first time we were behind him in view for more than a second. He didn’t have a chance to make us.”
They couldn’t really see into the Mustang, there were too many layers of car glass between them, so they had no clue what the kid was doing. The three of them were silent as they stared at what they could see of his car. Wilson kept expecting him to get out and walk to a house, but there was nothing.
“The fuck he doing?” Gabe asked after close to five minutes.
“I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing,” Wilson said in exasperation.” Maybe he’s doing a surveillance, he works as a P.I.”
“Around the corner from his house? In that car?”
“Am I Melvin the Mind-Reader? I don’
t fucking know. Maybe he picking up a friend.”
After another three minutes, Wilson was getting antsy, and wanted to leave, but he was afraid that pulling away from the curb would actually draw more attention to their car. And they’d have to drive past the kid, unless they did a U-turn. Both options sucked when it came to not being noticed, although there wasn’t any movement on the street. Parker’s drop phone rang again.
“Yo. No, he drove like two blocks from his house and stopped. No. I don’t know. Um…” Parker looked out the window for a street sign. “Larkins, why? Wait, what? No, Roo, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“What’s he want?” Wilson asked.
“What’s he doing?” Gabe asked.
“He’s, uh….” Parker said, hesitating, and then Wilson caught movement in his rearview. He looked up and saw Eddie’s burgundy Monte Carlo turn the corner behind them.
“The fuck? Gimmee that phone. Roo?” Now he was seriously pissed.
“The fuck we doing here Top?” Eddie said into his ear. Wilson watched as the Monte coasted to a stop a car length behind them. He could see Eddie behind the wheel.
“Eddie, I said to fucking back off and wait for us. This ain’t Detroit. We don’t exactly blend.”
“He just pull to the curb there? Why?”
“I don’t know. He just drove off from his house, and he’s sitting here. I don’t know if he’s waiting for somebody or not. He didn’t see us.”
He heard Eddie huff in his ear. “No, not that, I mean, this is the dude we have to pop, right? Why don’t we just do it here?”
“Roo, we’re right in the—”
“No, seriously, if killing this asshole keeps us out of jail, why don’t we just fucking do it? You’re clean, I’m clean, nobody’s on us, nobody’s even fucking awake. Let’s just fucking do it. I’m gonna do it.”