by Frank Zafiro
I put the receiver back on the hook and realized I was smiling.
I’m going to take my ten-day rip without filing an appeal.
I’m going to take Rebecca to Vegas.
Maybe I’ll come back.
Maybe I won’t.
Maybe after I tell her that I love her face to face, we’ll decide this shithole town can kiss our asses and we’ll just go somewhere else and get a fresh start.
Maybe.
I just don’t know yet.
GLEN BATES
From the Roof
“See that one there?” Bates said, which struck Romeo McClaren as ridiculous since both of them were looking through binoculars.
“Which one?”
“The one with the short hair, right next to the guy in the blue shirt with the wild-ass afro. See him?”
Romeo adjusted the focus of his binocs. The hot noon sun blared down on them and he sweated heavily underneath his dark, crisp uniform. “Guy in the FUBU sweatshirt?”
“Yeah, the yellow one.”
“I see him.”
“That,” Bates told him, “is Antoine Ballard. He’s been down on The Block since he was nine.”
Romeo lowered his glasses and looked over at Bates. The older, white officer leaned on the brick ledge with his elbows and peered down at the street. The gray at this temples and the slight paunch in his mid-section spoke to his age, but his shoulders were broad and his forearms were thick with corded muscle. Romeo had seen him in action twice since being assigned to the training officer. Bates was a tough old bastard.
“Nine? Jesus.”
Bates shook his head. “Jesus didn’t have nothing to do with it, but Antoine’s mother did.” He lowered his glasses and turned his gaze toward Romeo. A toothpick dangled from one corner of his mouth. “She was crack whore back in the early nineties. She was down here all the time, either getting crack or working to get money for crack. Whenever she came calling, she brought Antoine along.”
Romeo shook his head in disgust. “Poor kid.” He thought of his little brother, who was eleven. He couldn’t imagine Kevan down on the drug-infested Block, but of course he was a late-in-life baby and their Moms pretty much spoiled the kid. Hell, Romeo did, too.
“At nine, maybe it was ‘poor kid,’” Bates said. “But Antoine learned quick. He ran errands for the guys slinging dope and pretty soon they realized that if a kid was holding when the cops showed up, they might not even search him.”
“And if they did, no kid is going to get serious time, anyway,” Romeo added.
Bates nodded. “That’s right. But we figured out he was holding for them and he got popped for possession at ten and was introduced to the juvenile system.”
“How’d he get caught?”
“Coupla guys saw it from up here on the roof.”
“You?”
Bates shrugged.
Romeo shook his head in disbelief. “How is it that this here nest never got burned?”
Bates smiled, stretching out the small, jagged scar on his chin. “They don’t ever believe us. I’ve flat out told them I saw them from up on the roof through binoculars. I’ve even testified to it in court. They don’t believe it, though. They just think I’m lying.”
Romeo bridled a little at the word ‘they,’ and wondered, not for the first time, what Bates was thinking when he said it. Having a white training officer was something he knew he’d have to get accustomed to, since there were only half a dozen black cops on the entire River City Police Department. That’s the way it was everywhere in the lily white Pacific Northwest and Romeo was used to it. It didn’t bother him much, unless someone said something like ‘they’ and he got to thinking about it.
He raised his binoculars to his eyes again and watched Antoine and the wild-afroed associate. He tried to imagine the twenty-year old in the FUBU shirt and sagging, oversized jeans as a ten year old victim and couldn’t.
“He looks like a player now,” Romeo said.
“He thinks so,” Bates said. “And I suppose he is. He worked his way up the food chain. Still, he’s too stupid or maybe too greedy to get someone else to sell the shit. He just stands on the corner himself, taking all the risk.”
“Maybe he should take some business classes over at the community college,” Romeo joked weakly. “Learn how to maximize profits.”
“I think he’s got that part down.”
Romeo watched for a while longer. Antoine stood on the corner, leaning casually against the stop sign. His demeanor was more than calm; it was lazy. The wild-afroed kid with him paced back and forth, moving his body in dance rhythm to music Romeo couldn’t hear.
The two police officers watched in silence for a while. Romeo wondered how much longer the surveillance would last. Their shift was half over already, and all they’d done was eat breakfast and come up to the roof. He wanted to get back into the patrol car and chase after some bad guys. He was barely out of the academy and the thrill he felt every time he slid behind the wheel of the police cruiser was like nothing he’d experienced before. Sitting on a rooftop watching drug-dealers through binoculars wasn’t quite the same.
A car pulled to the curb next to Antoine and he ambled over and leaned in. There was a brief discussion and a quick exchange. Romeo was surprised at how fast the hand movements were.
“That’s it, right?” he asked Bates. “Now we can arrest him?”
The silence that came from Bates caused Romeo to lower his binoculars again and look over at the training officer. Bates stared at him with the expression of a frustrated teacher.
“Arrest him for what?” he asked the Rookie after a long moment.
“Dealing dope,” Romeo said.
“What’s your probable cause?”
Romeo gave him a confused look. “You said he was a dope dealer, right?”
Bates nodded.
“Convicted, too?”
“Twice, but never as an adult.”
Romeo shrugged. “Still, there’s history there. And we just watched him make a deal down on The Block, which everyone knows is where the drug trade is in this city.”
Bates didn’t answer, only continued to stare at him. Romeo fidgeted and licked his lips.
“That’s it?” Bates finally asked.
Romeo nodded.
Bates shook his head. “Sorry, son, that dog don’t hunt.”
Romeo clenched his jaw at the word ‘son,’ but said nothing.
“First off,” Bates said, “how do you know it was a drug transaction? Did you actually see the drugs? He could have sold that guy a recipe for brownies.”
In spite of himself, Romeo smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Bates demanded, a slight edge to his voice.
Romeo chuckled. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”
“Thinking what?”
“That if he were selling brownies, they were probably the special kind with a little chronic baked right in.”
Bates didn’t laugh and he narrowed his eyes. “Second,” he continued, “if you make an arrest off of supposing it was drugs he sold and then you search him and find the drugs, any defense attorney worth a damn will get it thrown out.”
“Why?”
“Fruit of the poisonous tree,” Bates told him. “You didn’t learn that in the Academy?”
Romeo nodded, a little dejected. “Yeah, we did.”
Bates twirled his index finger. “Go on. What is it?”
Romeo sighed and recited, “If we enter someplace without legal standing and then we find evidence there, the evidence is not admissible because the search was not proper.”
“Right. And that applies to people, too.”
“I know,” Romeo said. “I just figured that the arrest would be legal here, so the search would be, too.”
“What do you need for an arrest?” Bates asked.
“Probable cause.”
“Right. And what you have here is not probable cause. It’s probably cause, though.”
> “Probably cause?”
Bates cracked a smile. “Relax, Rook. It’s an old joke.”
Romeo nodded and forced a smile back. He didn’t like being called ‘Rook,’ but when he asked around, he found that Bates called all of his recruits that.
“So how do we solve this little dilemma?” Bates asked him.
Romeo thought about it for a while, watching Antoine through the binoculars again. Finally, he said, “Well, I guess it would pump things up some if we saw him make more than one contact.”
“You guess?”
“It would.”
“Good,” Bates answered.
Another car came along five minutes later and the brief contact at the window repeated itself, complete with the swift hand exchange. Three minutes later, a third car pulled up for another sale.
“That’s it,” Romeo said. “Let’s go arrest him.”
Bates shook his head.
“Why not? That’s three contacts inside of fifteen minutes. Along with everything else, that’s enough PC to arrest him.”
“You’re right,” Bates told him.
Romeo hesitated. “If I’m right, then let’s arrest him.”
“No.”
Romeo sighed. “Why not?”
Bates moved the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. Romeo felt a tickle of frustration high in his chest.
“You want him to go to jail or to prison, Rook?”
“What?” Romeo looked at him, confusion mixing with his frustration.
“You go down there now in your pressed, new uniform and shiny new badge, and arrest Antoine, you’re just wasting your time.”
Romeo clenched his jaw. “How’s that? I’d be arresting a drug—”
“Yeah, you would.” Bates removed his toothpick, examined the wet, chewed end and tossed it over the side of the building. “I ever tell you the story about the young bull and the old bull?”
Romeo pressed his lips together and shook his head.
Bates reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a fresh toothpick. “It’s an old story,” he said. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard it.”
Romeo didn’t respond. He wished Bates would get to the point.
“There was this old bull and a young bull and they’re up on top of a hill,” Bates explained. “Down below there’s a dozen or two cows, just grazing away. The young bull says to the old bull, ‘hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s run down there real fast and fuck one of those cows.’ The old bull shakes his head and says, ‘I’ve got a better idea. Let’s walk down there…and fuck them all.’”
Bates watched him as Romeo processed the information.
“You see?”
Romeo shrugged. “Sorta.”
“If we go down there now, we have enough PC to arrest Antoine. We’ll get his dope and he’ll go to jail. Everyone down there will see you’re a bad-ass rookie, built like a linebacker and taking no shit. That’s all fine and good. But the case isn’t going to get signed up by the prosecutor, so he’ll go free. He won’t go to prison.”
“Why?”
“Say the prosecutor has a hundred cases. He can take maybe two of them to court. Those are gonna be against his high profile dealers. After that, he has time to work out a plea for another thirty, maybe forty. That means sixty of them have got to go.”
“Sixty?”
“Facts of life, Rook. Sixty percent of them just die on the vine. But if we take our time and pile on the contacts before we head down there, there’s no way the probable cause gets questioned and maybe this case moves into the forty percent. Now you see?”
Romeo nodded reluctantly. “That’s messed up.”
“Welcome to the real world.”
They watched Antoine from the rooftop for another thirty minutes. He made four more contacts in that time and each time Romeo considered telling Bates he figured that they had sufficient probable cause to make an arrest. But he hesitated.
After the fifth contact, Bates said, “Tell me something else.”
“What?”
“No,” Bates said, “I mean, tell me something else about what’s going on down there.”
Romeo watched for another two minutes, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Who have his customers been?”
“Guys in cars.”
“What kind of guys?”
“Young ones, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Young ones,” Romeo said. “Except for the guy before last. He looked about forty.”
“What color?”
“Color?”
“What color of guys?”
“Oh. White, except for one.”
Bates waited while Romeo thought some more. When he didn’t say anything, Bates asked, “See any women?”
“No.”
“Any walk-ups?”
“No.”
“So what’s he selling?”
“Crack, right?”
Bates narrowed his eyes.
Romeo thought some more. No women meant no hookers. Most hookers were stuck on crack. Or heroin. He opened his mouth to say heroin, then paused. How many crack or heroin addicts had cars?
“Get it yet?”
Romeo chewed his lip. Maybe it was just suburbanites coming downtown for a rock of crack.
“You had it before,” Bates told him. “Earlier.”
Romeo thought for a moment longer, then his face broke into a smile. “Weed. He’s selling weed.”
Bates nodded approvingly. “Number one cash crop in Washington, even with the B.C. bud coming down from Canada to compete. And even though selling marijuana is the same charge according to the law as selling crack—”
“The judges don’t come down as hard,” Romeo finished.
“Exactly. So now what?”
Romeo watched Antoine through his binoculars. The man shifted his stance and leaned against the stop sign.
“I say we get one more contact and then go arrest him.”
Bates nodded his head. “That,” he said, “is a good choice.”
They didn’t have to wait long. A Honda with two college age white males pulled up next to the stop sign and made a quick purchase. Romeo repeated the license plate back to himself and pulled out his notebook to write it down.
“Oh, shit,” Bates said while Romeo scrawled.
“What?”
“Shit,” Bates repeated.
Romeo brought his binoculars up to his face and found Antoine on the corner. A police car pulled up next to him and a young officer was out of the car. Wild Afro walked away from them and the officer waved his hands in that direction.
“No way has he been watching him,” Bates muttered. “There’s no vantage point.”
Romeo brought his glasses in tight on the officer. He recognized Lee Vickers from their platoon. He was pretty sure Vickers had barely a year on the job. Vickers gave up on Wild Afro and concentrated on Antoine. The black man eyed the officer coolly and slid his hands out of his pockets, holding them in plain view. Romeo imagined the conversation.
You got warrants, Antoine?
Nope.
You holding?
Nope.
What are you doing down here?
Just kickin’ it.
After a short exchange, he heard Vickers come over the air with a name check.
“You see that?” Bates asked him. “That’s the young bull, right there.” He shook his head in disgust. “He’s got nothing or he would’ve already put him in cuffs.”
“Should I radio him to hook him up for us?”
“Hold on,” Bates said. “Maybe he has warrants. I didn’t check.”
Romeo didn’t respond, but he knew that Bates had made a mistake. If Antoine was wanted and Bates hadn’t checked, they’d wasted a lot of time watching him when they could’ve been arresting him.
The dispatcher called Vickers on the air. When he answered, she told him Antoine was not currently wanted.
“Go ahead,” B
ates said. “Radio the stupid shit.”
Romeo reached to depress his radio mike when unrelated traffic spilled out of the speaker. He waited for clear air, watching as Vickers seemed to reprimand Antoine and head back to his car.
“Goddamn Chatty Cathys,” Bates grumbled. “They think the radio is a telephone.” He sighed. “Might as well wait now. Let Vickers take off. We’ll go hook him up ourselves.”
Romeo watched as Vickers climbed back into his patrol car and sped off. He noticed Antoine watched the car, too. As soon as the Vickers drove around the corner, he straightened up suddenly and started walking in the opposite direction.
“He’s hoofing it,” Bates said.
Both men trotted to the roof access door. Romeo reached it first by several yards and flung it open. Three stories worth of stairs yawned beneath him. Romeo started down them and Bates followed behind. The training officer spoke once to warn him not to fall and break his head, but then he started breathing too heavily to speak.
They reached the bottom floor and emerged into the lobby of the movie theater. Romeo felt a light sheen of sweat on him, little more than from standing in the hot sun on the roof. He glanced back at Bates, whose breath came in ragged breaths. The older officer wiped his sleeve across his forehead, brushing away huge droplets of sweat.
“What…the fuck…are you…looking at?” he gasped at Romeo.
Romeo bit the inside of his mouth to keep from smiling and shook his head.
The patrol car was parked directly in front of the State Theater. Romeo fished keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Once inside, he hit the power locks and Bates opened the passenger door.
“Don’t…get in a…wreck,” Bates told him.
Romeo started the engine and pulled away from the curb. Five seconds later, he was at the corner where Antoine had been standing. The drug dealer was nowhere in sight.
Bates had slowed his breathing some. “Drive around,” he said. “He can’t be far.”
Romeo cruised down the length of The Block, past the greasy diner called Primo’s, a Laundromat and two bars. An assortment of hookers and dopers hung out on the sidewalk. All either deliberately ignored him or gave him a hard stare. He ignored them and drove on.
He took a left and drove another block with no luck. Two more lefts and he was back at the same corner he’d started at.