“You can sleep when you’re dead. We have less than twelve hours now.” Mike grabbed the folder from the table and his coat from the back of his chair. “Let’s go!”
“Fuck, Mike, relax,” Sal moaned, hurrying to keep up with Mike. “We don’t even know if they’re—”
“We do know,” Mike interrupted. Reaching the car, he hopped in and threw it in gear before Sal even had a chance to close his door.
“Our intel on this is good,” Mike continued. “Spit those fucking seeds in your hand and put them back in your pocket or I will smack you! And if it wasn’t for your fucking ex-partner, Rob—”
“Ron,” Sal corrected, spitting the shells by his feet as he scrambled for his seatbelt. “You know, I never wore one of these when I was on the job before I started working with you.”
“And I never hated fucking sunflower seeds before I met you,” Mike countered, squealing the tires as he drove the car out of the parking lot onto the street and began weaving in and out of the heavy midday traffic. “We should have saved the girls yesterday.”
“Holy shit, Mike. You’re sounding like some fuckin’ vigilante with a badge, man. Chill the fuck out.”
“Where are Julia and Hoagie? Are they already in place?” Mike demanded, honking at the huge rental truck ahead of them blocking the way.
“I’m with you. How the fuck would I know?”
“Can you call one of them, please?” Mike drummed his fingers on the top of the steering wheel of the stopped car. “Come on, buddy. The light’s been green for a few seconds now. Get your head out of your ass and drive!”
“Julia? Sal. Yeah, I got no complaints, let me put it that way.” Sal looked over at Mike, who was swinging the car out into oncoming traffic to get around the van. “Listen, I got Mike burning up the roads here wanting to jump the address. You guys in place?”
“I’m not burning up the roads,” Mike snapped, eyes fixed on the road ahead and gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands as he wove in and out of traffic until he reached a parking lot behind the target address. He pulled in sharply, screeched to a stop, and immediately shut off the engine.
“No, we can’t see anything from here,” Sal continued to Julia, as calm as Mike was anxious. “Serpico over here has apparently decided that we should wait in the coin laundry parking lot on the other side of the building until we talk to you guys. And then he’ll bash in some heads. Yeah. Okay. I’ll let him know. Ciao, bella.”
“What’s the problem?” Mike asked.
“Julia says there’s a van and a Ford Taurus that looks like one of ours sitting in front of the apartment.”
Mike took a deep breath.
“You. Are. Fucking. Kidding. ME!” Mike twisted the key hard in the ignition as he turned the engine on and dropped it into gear.
“Where the fuck are we going now?” Sal asked, fidgeting in his seat to get to the open bag of seeds in his pocket.
“To fucking sort this shit out. I am not going to lose my intel again!” Mike snarled as their car burst out from behind the laundromat. “Get Julia on the phone and let them know what we’re doing.”
Sal dropped the bag of seeds and hit redial on the phone.
“Yeah, me again, Julia. Tell Hoagie to pull up in front of the address. I think Mike’s gonna go postal on me!”
*****
“Get out of the fucking van!” Mike shouted after he leapt from his car and ran up to the van parked in front of the rundown apartment building. Pounding on the driver-side window, he pointed the barrel of his snubby at the driver and fumbled for his badge with his other hand.
“Fuck, Mike. Gimme a second to get outta the car, will ya?” Sal yelled, running up along the passenger side of the van, pulling his shirt collar down with one hand, levelling his gun at the passenger with the other.
“Drop the fucking gun or I’ll blow your fucking head off!” a voice called from behind Mike and Sal.
Sal immediately stopped running and held up his gun hand, finger off the trigger, his other hand frozen where it was on his collar. Mike stood unmoving, holding the gun steady at the rolled-up van window, only inches from the driver’s head.
“You hear me, asshole?” the voice ordered again. “Drop the fucking gun or—”
“Police! Don’t move!” yelled Julia at the big scruffy man aiming his gun at Mike.
“Juvenile Prostitution Task Force!” Hoagie added, his gun pointing at the other huge man standing beside the first.
“What the fuck?” the passenger in the van yelled, easing his door open with one hand, his service-issue snubby and his badge held high in the air in the other.
“No way!” Sal’s high-pitched laugh betrayed his nervousness as he lowered his gun and patting his chest over his heart with his other hand.
“Keep your hands where I can see them, shit-for-brains!” the voice behind him commanded.
“Detective Constable Salvatore, JPTF,” Sal called back to the voice, looking over his shoulder but not turning around, his hands shooting straight up in the air again. “D/C O’Shea with the gun to that cop in the van’s head, also JPTF. D/C Julia Vendramini and D/C Fred Hogan pulling up the rear! Mike, put your fucking gun away. Everyone here is a cop!”
The six undercover officers lined up behind the van, three on each side of it, none of them except Sal willing to holster their gun. An old lady pulling a bundle buggy containing laundry walked past them towards the rundown building, muttering something about the need for more cops in the neighbourhood. Two little boys scampered out of the front door of the building ahead of a young man with a limp. The boys’ mouths dropped open as they saw everyone with their guns drawn, but then they raced off. The young man with the limp took one look at the six guns and immediately turned back into the building.
Mike did not take his eyes off the front sight of his gun or move the gun away from the driver’s head.
“Who the fuck do you think you are and why are you here?” one of the Morality officers yelled out.
“O’Shea. JPTF,” he yelled back, slowly lowering his gun from the driver’s head before turning around to look at the man who had called him out. Mike held his gun pointed down to the ground, but his finger was still on the trigger. “I think my partner already introduced us, though. Who the fuck are you?”
“Morality. Running a play. Or we were, but I think we can kiss this one goodbye. Thanks, assholes.” The Morality officer spat and threw his hands up in the air without holstering his gun. “It’s all yours now.”
“Listen, bud, until they make you sheriff…” Mike snarled.
“And you. Other shithead,” the second Morality officer yelled, waving at Sal with his loaded handgun, “you’re just lucky I didn’t blow your fucking head off.”
“Well, at least the insurance would have paid off my mom’s house,” Sal snickered, looking over at Mike, who was turning an unnatural shade of red.
“Figures a numpty like you wouldn’t have a wife to leave everything to,” the second officer scoffed as he leaned sideways to replace his gun in the holster that was suffocating under his fat gut in its oversized hockey jersey. “Or a boyfriend.”
“Guys,” Julia cut in, glancing at the gawkers pulling out their cellphones around them, “can we take this somewhere else?”
“We’ll see you back at the barn,” the driver of the van barely waited for his partner to hop back in as he called back to his team and squealed around the circular drive back onto Dawes Road.
“Good job, ass wipes,” the Morality officer who had been aiming at Mike said, turning back to his car while signalling for his partner to do the same.
The four JPTF officers stood in front of the apartment building as the small crowd of gawkers dispersed.
“Well,” Sal said, “that didn’t go as well as we’d hoped, did it?”
“Fucking hell, no,” Mike said, slipping into the driver’s seat while Sal got in beside him and Julia and Hoagi
e got into their own car. Mike drove back into the parking lot in front of the laundromat, and Hoagie, who was driving the second car, automatically followed, parking nose to nose with Mike’s car and close enough for all four of them to have a conversation from their cars without anyone straining to be heard.
“So what do we do now?” Hoagie asked.
“Do a door knock,” Mike said.
“Why? Everyone knows that we’re cops and that we’re here. I doubt anything will come of it now,” Hoagie reasoned.
“I can’t believe she’d give me a working address,” Julia sighed, slowly shaking her head, looking out the passenger window at nothing in particular.
“Who?” Hoagie asked, looking over at his partner.
“Amanda. I met with her yesterday and she said— ”
“I knew it” Mike grumbled.
“How very meta,” Sal mused, staring vacantly at the traffic on the street, wondering if he had given the girl he’d ended up calling last night a key to lock up his apartment or not. “Cops taking down cops taking down cops…”
“She said they weren’t working this address. That it was known to them, but....” Julia’s voice drifted off as she reached down to pick her purse up from the floor of the car. “Did you know that a woman’s purse carries more germs than a toilet seat in a gas station restroom?”
“Men’s or women’s?” Sal asked.
“I guess she didn’t know that another team had something going here,” Hoagie offered by way of condolence as he watched Julia reach inside the bag and pull out a spray bottle of sanitizer and spray her purse.
“Or else the picture has shifted,” Mike said.
“What do you mean?” Julia asked, inspecting her purse before setting it on the seat behind her.
“How well do you know this Amanda chick?” Mike asked.
“Like a sister. We came on together. Same pod at Aylmer.”
“So she’s not going to give you shitty intel and she’s not going to burn another team, so I’m thinking that somebody got new info within the last day or so that has heated this address up enough that—”
“She did say there were reports of a few girls, but not enough to bring in,” Julia began.
“Do you think Teddy Bear might have dropped a dime?” Sal suggested.
“Fuck!” Mike exclaimed. “We never told the guard to put a no-contact order on him, did we?”
“Oh jeez!” Julia gasped, throwing herself across Hoagie’s body to get closer to Mike. “You know, I never even thought of that.”
“So you think your boy made a couple of calls this morning? Maybe giving somebody a heads-up?” Hoagie asked, pushing himself further back in the seat to allow Julia to get closer to his open window without mauling him.
“And somebody in unit 304,” Mike continued, “called their contact in Morality to bring them in, knowing that we’d likely be here to kick in the door. Right hand fucks left hand…again.”
“Very meta,” Sal repeated, nodding knowingly, his eyes narrowing.
“Did you sleep at all last night, Sal?” Julia asked. “Please tell me you weren’t playing videogames in your underwear.”
“Time to do a door knock,” Mike said.
“Too late,” Hoagie countered.
“Maybe, but what have we got to lose?
Chapter Ten
Monday, October 31st, 2005 - 2:05 p.m.
Sal grimaced. “Why do all elevators smell like piss?”
“Not all of them do, Sal.” Julia sniffed, then covered her nose in a fruitless attempt to minimize the stench of fresh urine. “Just the elevators we ride in.”
The lights in the elevator were smashed except for the one that was protected by a metal grill. Gang signs were sprayed on the Post No Bills signs screwed to the back wall, phone numbers were carved around the control panel, rudimentary likenesses of genitalia were scratched at a level that suggested small children were the artists, and there was a fresh mound of shit, presumably from a dog but it was impossible to say for sure, in the corner near Hoagie’s right foot.
“Okay, guys,” Mike said, trying to focus the team. “We’re walking in blind. No floor plans, no backgrounds on the occs except what I was able to pull this morning, which was essentially nothing, and nobody on our end knows that we’re here, do they?”“Geez,” Julia said quietly. “I forgot to call Dispatch to tell her we’d be doing a door knock. Maybe I should do it now?”
“Don’t bother. This should be a no-brainer anyway,” Mike said as the doors began to open. He didn’t want to think about what he had been standing in as he pulled his shoes up off of the sticky floor before stepping out of the elevator.
The third-floor hallway was darker than it should have been. Most of the fluorescent lights were missing, and the exit signs by the stairwells at either end of the hall glowed only dimly. The badly stained red patterned carpeting was covered in cigarette burns that looked like pockmarks. Unlike in the elevator, there were numerous competing odours in the hallway, making it impossible for the four undercover officers to discern what they were actually inhaling. Mike hoped it was just a combination of burnt cooking and poor housekeeping. Not a meth lab or a weeks-old rotting body.
Apartment 304 was to the right of the elevator. Whoever was inside could easily see through the peephole in the door if anyone was getting on or off. Or they could just open up and start shooting.
“Remember, everyone,” Mike whispered, looking at his colleagues for confirmation that they were all onside, “this is just a door knock. If the occs run, let them go. They aren’t likely to talk anyway. We want what’s inside the place. If we’re lucky, the girls might even be holed up here. At the very least, there’s gonna be something in there that we can work with. Got it?”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Mike and Sal took up their usual place on the left side of the door, one high, one low. Mike was point. His snubby stayed in the small of his back. He would do the talking. Sal had his gun drawn, and his job was to push into the apartment if the door opened.
Julia and Hoagie mirrored them on the right, Julia standing across from Mike while Hoagie crouched down below her. Hoagie had his gun out, tucked in close to his body. If something went wrong, Mike knew that Hoagie would cover him and Sal until they could find cover, which in this case meant running down the hall to a stairwell. Julia stood slightly behind Hoagie, gun out. She would have the best vantage point of any of them, and, if necessary, would step out in front of the doorway to stop the threat—or, in real terms, to shoot to kill. She would lead their entry into the apartment if it was empty.
Mike tapped Sal on the shoulder and nodded over to Julia and Hoagie before putting his finger over the peephole and giving the door three solid raps.
They waited, frozen. There was no answer.
Keeping his finger on the peephole, Mike gave the door another three solid raps.
They could hear movement from inside the apartment, but no footsteps coming towards the door. Not a good sign. Mike saw Julia take a deep breath and exhale slowly. He did the same, now knowing that this was likely to be a high-risk entry.
The rest of the team glanced over at Mike, who nodded before giving yet another three solid raps. Still nothing.
Mike removed his finger from the peephole and pulled out his snubby.
Suddenly, the door was flung open, and a man shoved his way past Hoagie and Julia and raced towards the stairwell at the end of the hallway.
If this happened, they were supposed to let the runner go. They’d ID him later.
Julia would take the lead and moved past Mike into the apartment. Hoagie was supposed to follow. Mike would fall in behind Hoagie, with Sal bring up the rear. It was a tried-and-true manoeuvre that they had developed over the years, and everyone on the team knew their role.
Except today.
What the fuck? Mike took a second look to confirm that what he had first thought was just a shadow wa
s actually Sal sprinting after the runner.
Mike turned and raced after his partner, but the runner had already practically torn the stairwell door off and was down the first flight of stairs with Sal a few strides behind him before Mike even reached the end of the hallway.
Julia and Hoagie stepped back out into the hallway, but seeing the stairwell door close behind Mike, they went back into the apartment in the hope of finding the girls. They felt a cold wind blowing from the open balcony door in front of them. Hoagie rushed to the balcony just in time to see a man, whom he could only assume had been in the apartment, running away from the ground floor balcony two floors directly below and racing towards the front doors of the building.
Julia meanwhile had done a quick sweep of the apartment. “All clear inside,” she reported as she came out to the balcony.
“The guy’s coming back in!” Hoagie said.
“I bet he’s going to meet our runner with a car. Stairs or elevator?”
The two officers ran out of the apartment and pressed the elevator button. Surprisingly, the elevator door opened immediately.
“I guess it’s elevator, but let’s get out on the main floor,” Hoagie said. “The last thing I want to do is get caught in an underground garage. Damned radios don’t work in most of them. If that’s where he’s going, I’d rather run down a flight of stairs than get ambushed in a dead zone.”
*****
As Mike pounded down the stairs, he saw that Sal was closing in on the runner. He panted as he tried to catch up, but despite the adrenalin dump triggered by both his anger at his partner’s asshole move as well as the thrill of the chase itself, the split-second delay at the start meant that he was always just that much further behind his partner.
Sal reached the main floor and raced across a short hallway to a door that Mike assumed led to another set of stairs going down into the underground parking garage.
Sal was through the door and down the stairs before Mike got to the main floor. Pushing himself as hard as he could to not lose sight of Sal, Mike jammed his snubby back into its holster, raced through the door, and leapt over the banister from the first of two sets of stairs, landing in a crouch on the parking level. As he gasped in an attempt to catch his breath, Mike saw his partner pull open the door to the garage itself.
10-33 Assist PC Page 13