by Margaret Kay
“Good. You?” She replied.
Mother approached the counter. “Looking for a new cigarette style one-hitter. I had this sweet pipe that you’d never tell the difference from a real cigarette and it walked off.”
“That sucks,” she said. “We have several styles in the case over there.” She pointed to the case on the far right-hand side.
Mother went to that section of the display case. She came over and stood in front of him. Mother glanced up, giving her the once over, and he gave her a smile. Her eyes were clear, her pupils normal sized. She wore a short-sleeved shirt. Her arms had no track marks. She didn’t appear twitchy or slow. She wasn’t high and had no telltale signs of being an addict.
“Let me see that one there.” He pointed out one that was the most realistic of the inventory. It was marked at nine dollars.
She pulled it from the case and handed it to him. He examined it closely. “I’ll take it. I don’t suppose you have any weed to go with it, or maybe some hash?”
“No, we don’t sell product. You’ll have to go to a dispensary for that.”
He followed her to the front of the store, to the cash register. He handed her a twenty. “You have a nice store here, a good inventory.”
“Thanks,” she said as she handed him his change.
“Do you get any grief from the neighboring stores? A buddy of mine just opened a store in Olympia, and two of the owners of the stores in the strip mall are being dicks.”
“The convenience store owner keeps to himself, doesn’t bother us much, but the lady who owns the beauty shop next door can be a bitch. She’s put up signs designating four of the parking spots in front of her store for her clients only, complained our customers were taking her spots.”
“My buddy also put in a cigar humidor and has a smoke room, so his customers stay longer. The owner of a bar that is next to his store complains about the parking too. You’d think the business owners would want to support each other. If they visit the strip mall for one store, they may spend some money in the other ones.”
“The bitch next door has mainly old ladies that come to her shop. I don’t think we’ll be getting too many of her customers.”
Mother laughed. “I’d hope the bar at the end of the strip mall would be cool. After all, you are serving some of the same customers.”
“Yeah, he’s okay,” she agreed.
“What’s any of it to you?” A deep, pissed off voice came from the back of the store.
Mother turned to look at the man who’d just come through the curtain which separated the store from the back room. He recognized the man from his DMV photo, Nate Ramos, the co-owner of the store. He was a big guy, six-three, and he weighed in at two-eighty. And it wasn’t all muscle. He had a beer gut that hung over his pants. He sported a full beard and had a shaved head. Mother knew from his file that he had a small fortune invested in ink all up and down his arms, full sleeves.
“Just making conversation,” Mother said. “How you doing?” He said with a head nod.
“Are you about done, babe?” He said to Spinks. He walked towards the front of the store. His voice held an edge.
Spinks’ eyes flickered to Mother for just a second. “I’m glad we had what you wanted.” She moved towards the back of the store.
“Thanks. As I said, you have a nice selection,” he said to her back. Then his eyes went back to Ramos. His pupils were constricted, a clear sign of opiate use. “You have a nice store. I’ll recommend you to my friends.”
The corner of Ramos’ lips twitched up. “Great.” His tone was sarcastic. He crossed his arms over his chest and attempted to stare Mother down. “Do you need anything else?”
Dawn Spinks was pleasant enough, but Nate Ramos was aggressive and argumentative. “Have a good one,” Mother said, and then he pushed through the door and left the store. “He totally thought I was hitting on his woman.” He chuckled. “And he was high.”
“Roger that,” Lambchop replied, taking a bite of the burger. It was cold, but he was hungry.
Mother turned the engine over and shifted to reverse. “I’m on my way back, unless you want help Coop.”
“Negative, we’ve got this,” Cooper replied.
Lambchop brought up the tracker signal on the car that Cooper and Jackson followed. He watched it make multiple turns, doubling back on its route, going blocks out of its way. It drove through a Walmart parking lot, circled, and then exited where it entered.
“This guy is looking for a tail,” Cooper’s voice came through his comms as Mother reentered through the back.
“Yeah, the driver’s actions are extremely suspicious,” Lambchop agreed.
Mother took a seat beside Lambchop. He grabbed his sandwich from the bag and took a bite. “I wish I would have eaten this while it was hot. This is awful.”
Lambchop chuckled. “Yeah, the grease was soaked through the bun on mine. So, Nate Ramos was high?”
Mother smirked. “Higher than a kite, angry and territorial. The hair salon beside their smoke shop already has a beef with them. If we need access to an adjoining wall, I’m sure the owner will gladly let us use her shop.”
Lambchop nodded. That was good to know. “Did Dawn Spinks think you were coming on to her?”
“I don’t think so. I think she just thought I was making conversation. She got Ramos’ drift though, made herself scarce when he came into the front part of the shop.”
“So, that begs the question, which one was Mr. Blue Ford there to see?”
“I’m going with Ramos. He’s a bully. Spinks isn’t running anything without his direction to do it and might not really be involved either.”
Lambchop was thoughtful. “Did you get the feeling that Spinks was afraid of Ramos? Is there anything there we can exploit?”
“Not so much fear. I’d gauge her emotions as more of putting up with him, maybe even making allowances for him.”
Lambchop shook his head and frowned. “I’ll never understand why some women put up with bad behavior and give their guy the benefit of the doubt.”
“Low self-esteem is usually a reason.”
“Yeah,” Lambchop agreed.
They watched the tracker and conversed with Cooper and Jackson. Linda Vale remained at the camera that was aimed at the smoke shop across the street. She would be on all night. Finally, the car with the tracker they watched arrived at a house north of their location in the Laurelhurst neighborhood.
Cooper and Jackson passed by the house, took photos of the driver going in the front door, circled, and parked across the street at an intersection. Cooper read off the address. “It’s a standard house in what appears to be a family neighborhood. Looks nice, well maintained shrubs and trees, manicured flower beds waiting for Spring,” Cooper reported.
Lambchop chuckled. “You sound like a homeowner already. I’ve been meaning to ask you; did you buy that house you and Madison looked at over near the school where Sienna teaches?”
Cooper laughed as well. “Yes, we did. I love my condo, but Hahna needs a yard to play in and there is an amazing wood swing set and fort in the fenced in back yard.”
Hahna was the youngest girl held by those human traffickers just before Christmas. She was a tiny four-year-old that Madison, Cooper’s wife, and fellow Operator, instantly bonded with and could not leave when the team was getting ready to pull out after the successful mission. Madison and Cooper brought the child home, welcoming her into their lives as their daughter. Shepherd called in some favors and they were granted legal custody of her.
The love Lambchop saw the entire team shower on that child was amazing. Several other couples set up bedrooms for her in their own homes so that when Cooper and Madison were working, the child would know she was being cared for by extensions of her new family. That’s what this team was, a family that he was proud to belong to.
“I can see Sammy running around playing with her back there,” Cooper added.
“And that gets me off the hook of
buying a place with a yard for a little while, though I’m sure eventually, Angel will want one for our kids too,” Jackson chimed in. His son, Sammy, was nearly two years old, and they had another child on the way.
“Are you going to find out the baby’s gender?” Mother asked.
“No, unless a sonogram reveals it, like Sienna and Garcia’s did. I’m kind of hoping for a girl because we’ll be done then. If we have another boy, I think Angel might want to try one more time for a girl.”
“There was a family back in the neighborhood when I was coming up. After six boys while trying to have a girl, they finally stopped,” Lambchop said.
“They had their own hockey team,” Cooper said.
“More like a basketball team in that neighborhood. Ice hockey is a rich man’s sport,” Lambchop said.
“If they’d kept going, they could have had a baseball team,” Mother added. “It’s something to consider, Jackson.”
“Fuck no to any team,” Jackson said. “Two to three kids, is it for me.”
The four men laughed again.
“Okay, here we go, our mystery man is leaving. He went in with a backpack but came out without it. We’ll follow at a distance. Let us know whenever you get info on the owners of that house,” Cooper said. Jackson, with camera in hand, clicked pictures of the man leaving with no backpack as proof to compare to those he took as the man entered the house.
“Roger,” Lambchop acknowledged.
Cooper and Jackson tailed the blue Ford to a low-income apartment building, not the address the car was registered to. They transmitted this information to Ops, too. “We’ll sit on this for a few hours,” Cooper reported.
“Roger that,” Lambchop replied.
Bravo
Sherman and Sloan reported in at twenty-one hundred. The weather forecast was for a low around forty degrees, with a fifty percent chance of rain, a common winter forecast for January in Seattle. It would not be a pleasant night for them.
“Mother, insertion point is here,” Lambchop said, pointing to the map. “And then you can go back to the hotel. I’ll be on tonight. Report back at zero six-hundred with breakfast and pick them up on your way here,” Lambchop ordered.
“Are you sure you’re up to pulling an all-nighter?” Mother asked. “I could be back by zero three hundred.”
“Nah,” Lambchop answered. “I’m fine tonight. Linda and I have it covered here.” He gave Mother a knowing grin.
Mother nodded. “Thanks.” He knew his friend was taking Annaka into consideration with volunteering to take the overnight shift.
Lambchop watched his three team members leave. He hoped they captured suspicious activity behind the smoke shop tonight because they didn’t have anything concrete so far. He knew drugs got into businesses in many ways.
The rain started just after the Undertaker and the Birdman got into position. It didn’t decrease visibility, though. At one hundred hours, a car pulled into the alley. It had tinted windows. Lambchop cross-referenced it against previous vehicles catalogued. It had visited on two other late-night occasions since the DEA had been watching the smoke shop.
“Heads up, incoming,” Lambchop broadcast.
“Yes, see it,” the Undertaker replied. A few quiet seconds passed. “Say cheese,” he added. “Got him, going into the back door of the smoke shop, carrying a box. Black male, late twenties to early thirties. I’m sending you the picture now.”
“Past visits of this same vehicle have lasted a half hour. How about one of you get in there and plant a tracker on that car?” Lambchop ordered.
“On it,” the Birdman’s Cajun accented voice replied.
Lambchop received four photos from Sloan. “Linda, come take a look at this. Do you recognize him?”
Linda Vale came over beside him. She focused her hazel eyes on the pictures. She shook her head, her short black curls bouncing. “No, I’ve never seen this guy. He’s not on our radar. Send me those pics and I’ll get them sent into our regional office and through the local SPD drug unit.”
Lambchop clicked a few keys. “Okay, just sent them to you. You know, of course, my team is going to have to go into that smoke shop and do some off the book’s recon, probably tomorrow night once we know Ramos and Spinks are either gone or in bed. This investigation is progressing too slowly.”
She shook her head again. “You know that could come back and bite us in the ass.”
“We’ve done a lot of these missions. We know what to do to get charges to stick. We’ve sent in three of our team members on three separate occasions and have gotten zilch. There’s a lot of strange comings and goings, but nothing that screams drug sales location. That house in Laurelhurst is our first real lead.”
“I’ve had too many cases kicked on technicalities and don’t want this to be another,” she argued. “I don’t know why, but it seems our prosecutors are working against us here in Seattle.”
Lambchop thought about that for a second. “I agree that’s a problem that needs to be looked at. I’d like to say I’m surprised to hear it, but I’m not. We’ve done a dozen similar missions and we’ve heard it before from other local teams. I thought it was coming from the legalization of marijuana in many locations that is causing this shift, but we’ve heard of solid cases getting kicked for heroin and oxy too.”
“Or perps getting ridiculous sentences if they are actually brought to trial and convicted. I had a seventeen-year-old major dealer released with time served and get put into a second chance program recently. This guy was a major player, and the judge put him back on the streets. Second chance my ass.”
Lambchop shook his head. “We’ll dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s. I guarantee it.”
“Okay, tracker planted on the target,” Sherman’s voice came through their comms, distracting their conversation. “I’m moving back to the cover position.”
“Our mystery man is exiting,” Sloan’s voice came through a half hour later. “And Ramos is leaving with him.”
Lambchop brought the tracker program up and watched the target vehicle move on the screen. A few seconds later, he realized that the tracker from the blue Ford was moving as well. He watched the two vehicles converge on that same house in the Laurelhurst neighborhood.
At zero six hundred, Lambchop’s phone chimed a new text message. It was from Mother. He was at the back door with Sherman and Sloan. He went to the back door and let them in. Sloan and Sherman were soaked. It had rained all night, a steady downpour.
They both carried bags. “We’re going to change right here,” Sloan said. “Is Vale still in there?” He pointed to the front room.
“Yes, her partner should be here soon to relieve her,” Lambchop answered.
“Keep her in there for a few,” Sloan said.
Lambchop and Mother passed back through the curtain as the two men started to shed their wet clothes. Mother had food bags in his hand. He passed Linda hers. “You’re going to want to stay in here for a few minutes. Our men are changing out of their wet clothes.”
Vale laughed as she opened her bag. “I’m glad I wasn’t them last night.”
Lambchop eagerly took his food container from Mother. He was starving. “We had some activity last night,” He told Mother.
“Yeah, Sloan and Sherman told me. Where did the mystery driver and Ramos go?”
“That house in Laurelhurst,” Lambchop said. “And the blue Ford met them there too.”
“A zero-one hundred hours visit to a house in a nice neighborhood across town. If that isn’t suspicious, I don’t know what is,” Mother said.
“Yeah,” Lambchop agreed.
Lambchop gave Sloan and Sherman a ride back to the hotel. He slept until late afternoon and then reported back to the surveillance point. Several hours into his shift, he sat back and rubbed his eyes, the fatigue of the stakeout and lack of sleep getting to him.
“Is anything wrong?” Ted Green, Linda Vale’s partner, called across the room to him.
“
Nothing, man, just tired,” Lambchop said. “We need something concrete on these guys. We have a lot of suspicious activity, but nothing that will get us a warrant.”
“I know. It’s maddening. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, I have to believe it’s a fucking duck.”
Lambchop laughed. “I think it’s time for my team to go off-book. These guys are careful. Besides the fact that Ramos is a lousy boyfriend to Spinks, we have nothing concrete. Running a wire or a camera from the beauty shop next to the smoke shop is our best chance of documenting real illegal activity. We never want to bring in a civilian on a case if we can avoid it, but sometimes it is necessary.”
“But the wire or camera would be without a warrant. How do you make it stick?”