Precinct 11 - 01 - The Brotherhood

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  Boone mentioned Pastor Sosa and the idea that someday Pascual would have to get serious about his faith.

  “You know how I’m doin’ it now, man? On the Internet. I downloaded a couple of Bibles—one of ’em was a modern translation in Spanish. I can understand it good. And there’s all kinds of stuff you can study on there. But yeah, I’d like to talk to somebody too. I just don’t know when I could ever do that. You and I both know that once this thing goes down and those guys get arrested, I’m gonna have to be held somewhere until I testify. Nobody’s gonna want to come where I am. And the prosecutor’s not going to want to risk revealing where I am. That would be the end for sure.”

  “I’ll come.”

  “You’re going to do this? Teach me? Bring me along?”

  “If you want.”

  “’Course I do! That would be great, before I get sent away.”

  Even the prospect of that, though Boone knew it was coming, made him feel horrible. He knew there was no choice. A man as big and recognizable and notorious as Pascual Candelario would be signing his own death warrant if he tried to stay anywhere in the United States. He and his mother and his son would all have to go to Mexico or South America, and after the cartel was exposed by his testimony, South America would likely be out of the question too.

  The FBI was working with the State Department on that eventuality. Boone could pray only that wherever he landed, Pascual would find a nice spot, a good church, and a set of supportive friends. Boone wondered how extensive plastic surgery would have to be to eliminate all of Candelario’s tats and perhaps even change the structure of his face. But even with that, he might be left looking like a giant Mexican with a traumatized face, and who would that fool?

  The night before D-day the task force techies picked up the Chicago PD personnel most closely connected with the operation and drove them to a warehouse on the Southeast Side. There sat a plain beige van, looking like some tradesman’s dilapidated vehicle. It had mismatched tires, random dents and scrapes, an ancient broken radio antenna, and was windowless behind the front seat.

  As Galloway, Keller, Wade, and Boone climbed in the back, however, it was as though they had entered a new world. Not only had the technicians loaded the vehicle with every gadget necessary, someone had designed it in such a way that all four men were able to sit comfortably and look over the shoulder of the middle-aged woman named Courtney who ran the controls.

  “So we’ll be able to see the video feed when we’re close enough tomorrow?” Boone said.

  “You can see it now,” Courtney said. “If the signal can reach us from 33.8 miles away, which is where we are now, it will easily reach a quarter mile tomorrow.” She hit a button and said through her headset, “SWAT and photo, are you in position? Task force is in place.”

  Immediately on the screen appeared a clear view through the window of the building in Evanston. “Looking good,” she said. “And it’ll be light enough early tomorrow afternoon to give us good images, correct?”

  “Affirmative,” came the reply.

  “What kind of sound will we be able to get out of that building?” Boone said.

  “Unless there’s some unusual interference we don’t know about, it should be close to what you’re about to hear. The photographer about eighty yards from the building and maybe a hundred feet off the ground has a phone just like the one you were issued.” She pressed her earphone closer and flipped another switch. “Mark, I’m putting you on speaker here. Can you give me a level?”

  Mark said, “One, two, three, four, no gangbangers anymore.”

  Besides making everyone smile, it sounded as if the man was in the van.

  “Of course,” Courtney said, “your man will be on the ground, sea level. But the signal bounces off a satellite anyway, so I’m guessing you’re going to hear your meeting tomorrow as well as you just heard Mark.”

  “Works for me,” Chief Galloway said. “Everybody back here at ten in the morning and we’ll head to our prearranged spot.”

  “If it’s this clear,” Boone said, “why don’t we just monitor it from here?”

  Galloway gave him a look. “You have my permission to camp out here, Detective Drake. I happen to have a team in place that could mean the end of organized crime in Chicago as we know it. I’d like to be close by when it goes down. How about you?”

  “Ready to go at ten, sir.”

  22

  D-day

  “If you have any trouble sleeping tonight,” Haeley told Boone at the end of the day Tuesday, “call me and I’ll bore you to death.”

  “That’ll be the day. But I might take you up on that.”

  “Anytime before midnight.”

  Boone wanted to avoid having to bother her, so he vigorously went through his routine, including a hard run in the early evening, despite the cold. Settling in bed after eleven, he felt anything but drowsy. He dialed Haeley.

  “Can’t sleep?” she said.

  “That and I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Sweet. What do you want to hear me say?”

  “There’s a loaded question. How about that you’ll remember me fondly if this thing blows up tomorrow?”

  “Not funny. You guys couldn’t be more prepared. It’ll go like clockwork. How does clockwork go, anyway?”

  “We’re ready,” Boone said.

  “You’ve been ready for weeks. How’s your man doing?”

  “Funny thing. He’s been living a lie for quite a while now. He’s not going to miss that. But he knows his life will never be the same.”

  “He’s doing a special thing.”

  “Yeah, but you know how he’ll be thought of in his own community.”

  “That’s no community, Boone. That’s a war zone. He has to know what he’s doing is right.”

  “He does. It’s the only motivation he has. A lot of people he has known forever are going to go down in this.”

  “And rightfully so,” she said. “Well, love, just know I will be thinking of you and praying for you. Past that, I don’t know what else will help you sleep.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Sorry?” she said.

  “You heard me. What did you call me?”

  “You heard me, too, Boone. Good night.”

  That didn’t allow Boone to sleep any easier, but it did give him something to think about other than what had monopolized his thinking for longer than he could remember.

  By 10:05 the next morning the OCD quartet was in the back of the van, on their way to Evanston, and discussing how they were to explain a vehicle sitting at the curb for up to a couple of hours if anyone grew suspicious. Both the driver and a cop in the passenger seat were wearing painters’ garb. “Their story will be that their foreman told them where to wait for him, and he would lead them to the job,” Galloway said. “Anybody gets pushy, we can move a few blocks and set up again.”

  Boone’s secure cell beeped. “It’s Candelario,” he said.

  “Put him on speaker,” Galloway said.

  Courtney hit a button, and they could all hear him. To Boone he sounded more enthusiastic than ever.

  “Mornin’, muchacho! You and your people ready?”

  “We are. How about you?”

  “I’m ready, but we gotta change the meeting place. Jacopo got cold feet at the last minute.”

  Galloway shook his head and dragged a finger across his throat. Boone said, “PC, you said you were waiting till the last minute so he wouldn’t have time to make a change like this.”

  “I did, but listen, man, I tried to force him into Evanston by telling him first that I wanted him and his guy to come to the Northwest Side. He said he wouldn’t be caught dead there. So then I do my switch and tell him I might be able to get my friend to let me use his place on the North Shore, you know? At first he said okay, and then he just called and said he had a better place.”

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  “I am, amigo! Can’t you take
a joke?”

  “You dog.”

  Pascual was cackling as Boone’s bosses sat shaking their heads. “Boone, you need to tell your people everything’s off and we’re goin’ somewhere else! C’mon, they’ll love it!”

  “I work with a different breed of cat than you do, PC. So, seriously, everybody’s in?”

  “They’re in, bro. I did use that line about meeting in my neighborhood first, though. I thought Grazzy’s head was gonna fly off. He says, ‘I come to you with the biggest deal you’ve ever had and you want me to come into DiLoKi land?’ I pushed him and pushed him and promised I would protect him, but he wasn’t buying. I sounded real reluctant about Evanston, telling him that getting my people to go up there was like asking him to come here. That he bought.”

  “You going to be okay, Pascual? You can play this game to the end and pull it off?”

  “Me? Oh yeah, man. C’mon. I made my living doing this. I know these guys. You’re gonna enjoy this. They’ll all posture and threaten, and I’ll give it right back to them. When we leave Evanston, they’re going to think they just made the best deal of their lives.”

  “Ask him about the weapons,” Keller whispered.

  “Hey, PC, what did you guys agree to about guns?”

  “Everybody’s leavin’ their straps in their cars. Jacopo’s lieutenant will be frisking everybody; then I’ll frisk him and Jacopo.”

  “So everybody in that room will be unarmed.”

  “Right.”

  “That changes everything,” Boone said.

  “Now you’re kiddin’ me, right, hombre?”

  “No, listen. We were going to let these guys get back into the city before rounding them up, and we were thinking we might take you along with them to make it look good until they figure it out.”

  “Yeah, that’s got to still be the plan, man. That’ll work. What are you thinking?”

  “We want to do this when we can guarantee nobody gets hurt. We don’t want you guys shooting each other or us, and we sure don’t want to have to shoot anybody we’d rather indict. Understand?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Once we have recorded everything we need in order to bust all these guys, we’ll move in and arrest you all, making sure nobody can get to his car. You follow?”

  “They’re gonna know—and I mean as soon as you show up—that it was me.”

  “Maybe, if they’re smart. But we’re going to cover for you as long as we can. We’ll tell the press we’re booking each of you in solitary to keep all the principals isolated. The plan is that everybody will think you’re in the joint until it comes time for you to testify.”

  “You better get a picture of me bein’ processed in somewhere. Make it look real. Face it. It won’t be long before it gets out.”

  Boone looked to Pete Wade, who consulted with the others and nodded.

  “We think we can do that, PC, and we’ll make it look as good as we can.”

  There was a long silence while Pascual was obviously processing this. “I guess that’s okay,” he said. “But you want to have a little more fun?”

  “Fun is your word for this, PC, not mine.”

  “Yeah, but this will be good. There’s a guy coming who’s as bad or worse than I ever was, and you know that’s saying something. Name’s Skeeter Robinson. You know him.”

  “’Course we know him. His roots go way back before your time. Bad dude.”

  “Maybe in the middle of the bust, you just thank him.”

  “PC, you’re not right.”

  He was cackling again. “He’s gonna get what’s coming to him anyway, but if even for a split second everybody in that room thinks he’s the snitch, it would be too sweet.”

  “PC . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really that lighthearted about all this? You see what’s going to happen here, right? You realize the ramifications.”

  A long pause. “Yeah, I know. I’m just representin’, pretending it’s going to be something else. My madre doesn’t even know what’s happening today.”

  “You want us to call her when it’s over?”

  “Nah, I’ll do that. I’ll be able to, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “And you still can’t tell me where I’ll be holed up before testifying?”

  “If you don’t know, that guarantees no one else will know.”

  Pete Wade slipped Boone a note.

  “Okay, it’s official,” Boone said. “We’ll invite the press to central booking, where we’ll process you; then when they’re gone, we’ll sneak you out of there. Now, everything else aside, Pascual, you set to go?”

  “Locked and loaded.”

  Boone snorted. “I was hoping it would be you who used that cliché and not us. How about unlocked and unarmed?”

  “That too.”

  “See you on the other end. And on behalf of the citizens of Chicago, thanks.”

  “You got it, man.”

  “And on behalf of me personally, know I’ll be praying for you, Pascual.”

  “Now you’re talkin’, amigo.”

  If Boone had ever wondered how Fletcher Galloway reached his exalted position, he had no doubt after watching the man in action over the next ninety or so minutes. The chief was in constant contact with SWAT and central command, arranging for the location of teams and the cues that would send them into action. He seemed to think of every exigency.

  “The one thing we’ll want to watch for,” he told the SWAT leader, “is whether any of these guys—and I would expect Jacopo to be the most likely—will have some compatriots following at a distance and looking for CPD personnel to be staging somewhere, ready for a takedown. Somebody gets that word to Jacopo by some code, and all of a sudden half those guys are out of there and on their way to their cars and their weapons.”

  The van was positioned three streets over from the route the gang kingpins would have to take to get to the lighthouse side building, and one of the cameras in the trees was focused on the road so Courtney and the Organized Crime Division personnel would know when they were coming.

  Boone had a list of the principals and their most likely vehicles. As specified, Pascual was the first to arrive, and he was alone. He parked in the shade of a grove of trees, unlocked the building, and set plastic folding chairs around a cheap particleboard table inside.

  “Can you hear me, Boone?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Grazzy’s gonna hate this, man. It’ll be the dumpiest place he’s had a meeting in forty years.”

  Galloway gave Boone the scissors sign with his fingers, and Boone told Pascual, “Consider me off the air now, PC. We’ve got you covered. Don’t risk talking directly to me.”

  “Suspect vehicle,” Courtney announced, and the men leaned forward to see Skeeter Robinson and a young associate pull into view. A few minutes later, when Robinson’s tricked-out BMW slid in next to PC’s car, Pascual emerged from the building and greeted the two as long-lost friends.

  All three of them were vile and profane, as was the custom among these types. Skeeter would be the oldest of the gangbangers, in his fifties. As for the Outfit, Jacopo was in his seventies and his lieutenant in his late sixties.

  Skeeter said, “Where’s Jazzy, man? I know he’s hip-deep in this.”

  “Mindin’ the store, Skeet. What you think, I leave there with nobody in charge?”

  “Not unless you wanna be robbed blind!”

  “You got that right.”

  Skeeter’s associate, whom PC greeted as Ray-Ray, would be the youngest at not yet twenty-five. “Glad you could come, bro,” Pascual said as the two newcomers entered the building and began checking it for security.

  “Wouldn’t miss it, man,” Ray-Ray said. “I’m in charge of the markets for us now, you know.”

  “I know, I know! Haven’t seen you since you offed that business owner’s wife, the one on South State?”

  Boone was furiously scribbling notes.

&nbs
p; “Shot her face off, man. That takes care of her ID’ing anybody on her deathbed, don’t it?”

  “She was way gone before they even put her in the ambulance, wasn’t she?”

  “Before she hit the ground, PC. Buckshot done mixed with brain, baby.”

  “Man, you’re ahead of my pace, and I thought I was doin’ good. How many is that for you now?”

  “Seven.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “It’s true! Tell ’im, Skeeter!”

  “I don’t care who tells me,” Candelario said. “You ain’t got no seven kills at your age.”

  “He does,” Skeeter said, apparently not even sniffing the trap, while pulling out his phone. “His first three was all at once.”

  “Three at once? Where?”

  “You remember that,” Ray-Ray said. “Over by Chicago Vocational, those football players. Made the papers and TV news, here in the city and everywhere else.”

  “I didn’t know that was you.”

  “Nobody knew it was me, man. That’s the beauty of how I work. I change methods. All the experts think they got a handle on you if you do ’em all the same way. Those three I gut-shot in the kidneys, then capped in their brains in case they bled out too slow.”

  “A masterpiece.”

  Ray-Ray nodded.

  Keller said, “I hope PC’s smart enough to know we’ve got plenty on Ray-Ray now. He gets him to recite all seven, and Skeeter’s going to smell something.”

  As if on cue, PC turned his attention to the older man. “You weren’t that young when you broke your maiden, were you?”

  “Close,” Skeeter said, studying something in his phone. “I’m gonna say I had three by the time I was twenty-one.”

  “Man, you guys start young! I mean, I was a teenager, but I was crazy. You were all sophisticated and stuff by twenty-one, weren’t you, Skeeter?”

  “We all were. Not thugs like so many today. But we were the first to use AK-47s.”

  “I ’member that,” PC said. “At least I heard it by the time I was coming up. How many did you do with a ’47?”

  “Just my first. We knew the cops knew we were strappin’ ’em, so we didn’t want to leave an easy trail.”