by Robert Cea
Her face turned from anger to hurt in a flash, she looked wounded; she backed away from me slowly and turned. There was a long, quiet moment, and before she walked inside, she said six simple words: “You’re going to be a father.”
Dazed, I stumbled backward into a lounge chair. That was the last thing I expected her to say. I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach by a horse—now there were three of us.
The time was right to do the Shah. We wanted him off the street before he could do any damage or before any one of these IAB pricks or whoever had the case could get to him.
John stood out of sight while I knocked gently on the dirty apartment door. The old bullet holes were now rusted in the fireproof metal. I could hear a Spanish show on the TV, playing loudly behind the door. I knocker harder. The door opened and a woman who appeared to be in her eighties stood there. One of her eyes was glazed over with a gray film, probably from an untreated cataract. Her skin was wrinkled and her teeth were rotted in her mouth, but she was dressed in a clean, neat, black day dress and wore rosary beads around her neck. She was smoking a thin brown cigarette, probably one she’d rolled herself. This woman was hard-core old-school Puerto Rico. The flag hanging in her living room said as much. She smiled when she saw it was me at the door and patted my back. She opened the door for me to come in. She didn’t speak a word of English and my Spanish was as good as curse words and slangs, and that wasn’t going to get me anywhere with this proud woman who had more than a handful to deal with, with her grandson Cholito. I smiled back at her and called for Cholito to come out. He moved off the couch slowly. His eyes were focused, so I knew he wasn’t high. This would be good for me. He stepped into the hall and shut the door.
“Wassup, Tatico, a warrant come up on me or somethin’?”
I smiled; he was concerned that he might have caused me inconvenience. “No, brother, no.” We walked to the dirty window that looked out into the atrium where children were playing, where children could so easily have been shot. “Cho, you gotta give me an honest answer, and nothing is going to happen to you as long as you tell me the truth, okay?”
He was seriously focused now; I really liked him when he was sober. I could tell he was a loyal grandson; I knew he gave her much of his earnings and then some. Cho’s vice was not money, it was flecked powder. Before the junk found its way to his heart, he was probably a trusted friend. I reached out and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Did you ever tell any cops that we gave you drugs or money? Is anybody paying you to tell them about us? Just please, Cho, we go back, just tell me the truth.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head no. He exhaled loudly and then he placed his hand on my shoulder; he truly looked as sad as I had become. “Oh, poppa, no, they got you on something? Poppa, no, you like my brother, man. Never, never would I turn on you, never.” He didn’t let go of my shoulder. This wasn’t an attempt on his part to play me; he cared.
Conroy appeared behind Cho, who felt his presence and spun around. He was right up on him. “If you’re fucking with us, I’m gonna come back and find you, because at that point, nothing matters. You feeling me?”
All Cho could do was nod. I touched his shoulder again, saw the distaste in Conroy’s eyes. Cho turned to me, and the fear in his face was evident. I could only hope that he still trusted me. “We’re going to do Shah.” I whispered this. No one was in this filthy hallway, we’d swept it for bodies before talking to Cho, but I whispered it because I truly knew the depth of what we were about to embark on. We were going to take out the biggest drug dealer in Brooklyn, and a very wealthy one at that; his tentacles were far-reaching and very dangerous. “We’ll need to know when and where it comes in.”
He smiled weakly at me; I smiled back. John Conroy simply stared.
The sun was just rising over the low, beat-up mom-andpop storefronts that dotted Third Avenue. There were junkies already lining up in front of the South Brooklyn Health Care offices, a fancy name for the local methadone clinic. Below, in the courtyard, a couple of crackheads were searching under benches and in the overflowing garbage cans for empty crack vials. They would get a penny for every vial they turned back in, much in the same way I used to collect cans for pennies when I was a child.
She walked slowly across Nevins Street, occasionally stopping to check on the baby that was apparently sleeping comfortably under the periwinkle blue blanket, on her way toward Baltic Street. Though it was before six in the morning, she walked as if it were three in the afternoon, not a care in the world, just out for a stroll with little Johnny on her way to the playground. When she reached Baltic, I saw a car door open and close quickly in the middle of the block. “There’s gun number one,” I whispered. The dude who stepped from the car was big, with the physique of a bodybuilder. More jailhouse muscles, I thought. I’d never seen him before. He walked in front of the woman. They never made eye contact or had any other discernible communication that I could see. He loped into the atrium at the far end of the projects; she followed. They both headed straight to the building. Another man who was as big walked from the north end of the projects and followed the woman; he was approximately forty feet from her back, almost the exact distance the lead gun was. “There’s number two,” I said. They entered the building. Conroy and myself exited the hallway and climbed one flight up the fire stairs. We were now two flights above our target apartment. The intelligence we’d received from Cho was that the lead gun would take the elevator with the woman while the second gun would sweep the stairway for bodies, moving one flight above the apartment to check to see if there was anyone above. Then he’d walk down and enter the apartment with the other two mules. This was done to the letter, with much precision. The Shah’s crews were paid well because they were highly skilled. He was a smart businessman, that was a given. “You receive much of what you pay for,” he would say. His drugs were primo and his workers were professional. The heroin game is short-lived and dangerous, though Shah had played the game way beyond his own life expectancy because of his excellent business acumen. That is, until today. Shah has a shelf life too. I smiled at the thought. This actually might work. These projects were no longer going to be run under the dictatorship of Shah King and company or, for that matter, John Conroy. It was going to be open season on everyone.
We heard the second gunman’s footsteps reach the landing below us, one flight above the apartment. We then heard him descend two floors and the fire door close. We moved quickly down the stairs and John moved into the hall, charging for the door before it closed. He just made it in, kicking the door wide open. Shah did not know we were there until we were in the apartment. He was still sitting on a tattered couch drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup, with another man, Spanish, who I’d also never seen before; the skinny chick with the baby carriage, and a black woman, probably a blood relation to Shah, who appeared to be in her thirties and was wearing a housecoat, which told me they were using her place to deliver. When he saw Conroy’s gun and our convergence method, he knew he was being played. He jumped up off the couch and yelled, “Chill, motherfuckers chill!” to the three other men in the apartment. We were seriously outmanned and outgunned, so I was locked and loaded. First one to make any move was getting a hot one, and then I probably was not going to stop shooting. The stakes were much too high. If I was going, so were they, all of them.
The men raised their hands in the air, listening to John’s commands. The Shah just stood in front of the table, his arms outstretched, palms facing the ceiling. They didn’t move, he didn’t move, not because he was listening but because he was confused. Was Con actually playing him?
“Con, what the fuck, son, what the fuck you doin’? Tell a nigga’ this ain’t what it appears to be!” His voice pitch was high, though he was trying to keep it together, not looking at the lowly aide-de-camp—me—once. This was a Brooklyn thing between John and his bitch, or vice versa.
“Tony, shut the fuck up and put your hands up!” Conroy called him Tony, so
mething he’d never done before. I saw the realization of the situation in the Shah’s eyes when he heard it. He slammed his hands across his outer thighs three times, quickly, as if he were on the brink of a temper tantrum.
“Oh, motherfucker, motherfucker, you motherfucker, Con, you cunt motherfucker. I thought we was partners, you white cunt motherfucker!” He was livid, screaming, with his eyes closed. He knew we had him, he knew we were going to do what we did best, and that was to put him away for a very long time behind our great acumen, testilying in court. The Shah was got!
Suddenly he stopped screaming, looked at Conroy, and said to him calmly, “Fuck am I screaming about? You right, son, you bagged us correctly, so we pay the tax…” He pointed to the carriage, then he waved his hand around the apartment. “Do the do, Con, take it all.”
I wasn’t naive or stupid. I knew there was a lot of pure gack in the carriage, I knew there was going to be a lot of armament in the apartment, and I most definitely knew there was going to be much cash in the apartment as well. I don’t care who you are, the thought of turning a blind eye in a situation like that is going to cross your mind. This was no IAB setup, as we’d gleaned from Cholito, so no one could have known we were hitting the spot. We didn’t even tell Cho if and when we would, and we only did a tour change four hours prior to the operation. So this was a highly compartmentalized, seamless plan that even our bosses were not aware of. I quickly remembered my suspicious feelings about the two; maybe they had been down this road before, and maybe Conroy had erred. In any case, I was not going to be the patsy like so many other cops who got dragged into a bribe and never got out. Before allowing Conroy to even think about the answer to the offer, I stepped up to Shah, who still hadn’t acknowledged my presence. I pistolwhipped him over his right eye and it squirted blood immediately. He was stronger than I’d expected, or maybe he was too stunned by what he saw as Conroy’s betrayal, but he only stepped back in a daze. Soon though, that familiar look of pain crawled across his face; it felt really good to give this prick that pain. It was not nearly what he deserved behind what he’d done to me and Conroy and Cho, but it was a start.
Conroy screamed, “No, no, no, Rob. Goddamnnit, no!” He spun his gun at each of the other men and the two women. I just watched the blood dribble through the Shah’s fingers and down his thick forearm. I liked the sight of his blood, and I liked the fact that I was the one who’d opened him up. I was not focused on Conroy or the other animals in the apartment, only this scumbag in front of me. I wanted him to step to me, but he did no such thing. He just stood with his hands pressing the gash above his eye. Still he did not look at me.
I moved to the rear of the apartment, swept through the rooms as Conroy called for backup. The rooms were empty. I then moved to the baby carriage, pulled the Cabbage Patch doll out from under the periwinkle blue blanket, and tore up the thin cushion; there taped to the bottom of half-inch plywood was the end of Shah King’s reign—one kilo of 96 percent pure heroin, about $130,000, which would have been whacked up into thousands of dimes of lesser purity, and that’s where all the money would have been made. Not today, I thought. I looked up and smiled at the Shah. “You are so fucked… Tony.”
This must’ve been quite the pill for Conroy to swallow. He was the biggest felony-arrest cop on the job, and that was due in part to the man we’d just arrested. It was clear that not only was the Shah’s reign in the streets over, John Conroy’s reign could have just ended as well—and that had to suck.
Conroy took the collar. The Shah, whose real name was Anthony Huggins, did not say another word to us. He also refused medical aid, and I was more than happy to oblige. We arrested all of them—the two women, and the three other men in the apartment, split them up and tried mightily to have each of them roll on the others, but they’d been down these nasty roads before, so we got dick out of them. I left after we completed the paperwork, to attend to some pressing personal business.
I took a cab to 55 Water Street, which was half a block from the South Street Seaport. Mia was not expecting me; I wanted her to know that in spite of my actions, deep inside I loved her and was thrilled that she was pregnant.
The receptionist rang her while I sat down in the ultramodern lobby. There were wraparound windows looking to the far reaches of New Jersey on one side, and to the other side, the place where I had just played a dangerous game of cops and robbers—the Badlands. The second I saw the Statue of Liberty, I got that feeling that I wanted to get back there. Then I thought about why I was here and I had to suppress my anxiety and urge to sweep the streets again. Tomorrow is another day, I thought.
She stepped into the lobby, completely off guard. Her hair was up in a bun, revealing her diamond earrings. Her silk Hermès blouse was unbuttoned just above her breastbone. I tried to get past the anger welling up in me when I saw this—I was sure that the other men on this floor must’ve had quite the field day fantasizing about what was underneath. I let it go. She smiled as she crossed to me and kissed me full on the lips. She noticed the bag.
“What’s in the bag?” She smiled, knowing that this was an apology, so there must’ve been something good inside.
“We have a dinner reservation for five-fifteen at Flutie’s. You cool with that?” I asked her this quietly. I did not think that the receptionist needed to know that I was on my knees.
“Meet you there in half an hour.” She kissed me again; I noticed her leg rise off the floor gently. I took this as a good sign. She did still love me, and I did still love her; she had to have known this. I smiled and turned to leave. The receptionist buzzed the glass door to let me out and I moved to the elevator. I turned to look back inside the lobby and Mia was still there watching me, a sad look on her face. I felt a knot ball up in my stomach; I tilted my head at her and she sadly mouthed the words “I love you.”
I was sitting at the south wall of the restaurant. There was a big window that overlooked the East River, but more important, it faced the Badlands. Of course, not one person in the restaurant knew this. How could they? Three quarters of the patrons were tourists without a clue, and the rest of them were the very three-thousand-dollar suit-wearing clowns I was sure were trying to look at Mia’s tits any chance they got. I felt some resentment toward these guys. They were as much a part of the problem as the Shah Kings and the rest of the slingers and gunners out there. Supply and demand—these cats were happy to be away from Brooklyn, but they’d certainly keep the dealers in business by having their cocaine and heroin delivered so they could speedball their way into oblivion in the privacy of their gated communities north, east, and west of the city, thus enabling the dealers to branch out into the environs of wherever the fuck it was they wanted to sling. Back in the seventies it was called white flight; now it was simply known as young, upwardly mobile professionals moving out, leaving the boroughs to be swept clean by guys like me. I began to look at anyone who was not in the mud with me, fighting the animals, as frauds. They were as guilty as the dealers and shooters themselves. It was a twisted and paranoid way of thinking, but it helped me straddle both of those complicated worlds, and as I finished my third Jack Daniel’s I felt good, a certain self-righteousness came over me, knowing that I was doing something noble. I sat there in the restaurant with all the chattering and clanging of silverware and felt the butt of my gun. That to me was worth more than any material happiness. That was as real as it got, and Shah King could vouch for that.
Mia made her way to the table. She sat next to me and held my hand. “Ooooh, Momma needs a big, fat cocktail, but the doctor says different…maybe just a glass of wine.” She looked at my drink, then at me. “You okay, baby?”
It seemed that she was so cautious of my moods lately; I felt terrible that we had gotten to this low point in our marriage. I smiled back and kissed her. The waitress came over and Mia ordered a chilled bottle of Puligny-Montrachet. I, of course, knew nothing of wines other than the fact that the ones she ordered were expensive and went down really
easy.
I placed the baby blue Tiffany box on the table. Mia loved buying, but she especially loved receiving. Her eyes filled as she removed the tasteful, thin paper from within the box. Her long, manicured hand moved slowly up to her mouth; she then reached over and hugged me. She removed the sterling-silver rattle that had the engraving “Mia and Rob’s baby.” She blotted the tears that now fell freely from her eyes. I loved her deeply at that moment. I wanted to make things right, but the words didn’t come to me as easily as they once had. I tried.
“I know things haven’t been…like they were,lately,and I’m so sorry, Mi, so sorry. More than anything else I want you to know that I’m excited about the baby, and I love you.”
She cupped my hand in hers; she paused before she spoke. “I miss you, Rob. I miss talking to you. Can we be honest with each other? No judgment, just us talking like we used to?”
I wiped the tears from her eyes. I held her tightly and whispered, “Of course we can.”
“I feel that maybe you have moved beyond me, that you outgrew me. I even feel that maybe there’s someone else.” She dropped her head and stifled a whimper after she uttered those words. I knew that that would hurt her to the core, the betrayal of the trust that we shared. There would be no coming back from that. I was terrified of losing her, but, more important, of hurting her that deeply, because I had already crossed that fucked-up bridge. I felt the guilt rise up within me and I held her hand reassuringly.